Nope, you haven't missed anything! I haven't gone from longing for spring to beginning to eat a garden harvest.
We're still enjoying the canned tomatoes, the frozen zucchini and pumpkin puree, the pickles, the dried spices, etc. from last summer and can I just say what a beautiful thing that is!!!
**I only wish I still had that much left, but that was some of what I originally started out with last fall**
The other night, I made up a Zucchini Spaghetti Bake, and it felt so good to know that half of the dish (zucchini, tomatoes, basil, oregano) were all from my garden. This is the beauty of preserving!
As I'm planning my garden, I intend to really do it from a mind-frame of not only what we enjoy eating fresh in season, but also what we can preserve through dehydration, freezing and canning, so that we can enjoy our garden's bounty all year long!
Have you also enjoyed the benefits of preserving from your garden's produce? Do you plan your garden with that in mind?
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We always grow lots of basil in summer to make and freeze Pesto for the winter months. A steaming hot bowl of pasta doused in pesto is yummo!!
i wish! right when i loaded everything in my mom’s big subzero, it died while she was on vacation and we lost everything. better luck this year (and better freezer.)
April, I too feel as if I am a new gardener, even though I have had them before. This year I plan to be more deliberate about it and work toward long term gardening and use season extenders. I recommend you read All New Square Foot Gardening to learn about raised beds (lots of benefits), but I wouldn’t make a box only 6 inches deep as he recommends. I would go deeper. I also recommend a couple of other books and ideas on my blog at River Rock Cottage. And you can follow along with me over the spring and summer as I blog my own journey.
What a beautiful sight!
We start looking through the seed catalogs around Christmas/New Years, and start our garden plan and canning “schedule” around the same time. It’s so much easier to deal with putting food up if you already know what you’re looking to end up with.
(…although, I SO wasn’t planning on ending up with 37 tomato plants! We just starting putting our transplants in the ground the other day, and didn’t count them as we went. 37 plants later…!! Let’s just say we’ll be rolling in tomatoes still this time next year. :) But I’m planning on putting up tomatoes as chopped/diced, paste, spaghetti sauce, sweet and sour sauce, and pizza sauce, so I wanted to “have enough”! ;))
We plan our garden around the things we use the most. I spent the last year (when we didn’t have a huge space for a garden) keeping track of the things we used the most that I could replace with “home grown”. We also decided to add in a few plants that we liked (such as artichokes, asparagus, brussel sprouts, etc) that were just pricey when you buy organic.
i would be curious to hear what all you plant, how big your garden is and how you built your garden. i am planning on starting a garden this year (first time) and am interested in how others do it
yes we are still enjoying our harvest. I also had to do some things that I purchased/picked from other, more experienced gardeners/farmers, some of what was brought up to me from elsewhere by family, because I am a fairly new gardener and in a cooler climate so its harder to grow those warm crops. Hoping for a warmer summer with less rain this year…
We do plan our garden with this in mind. Beans and carrots grow really well here so I am planting tons this year to preserve and hoping to get tomatoes from further south instead of growing a lot of them for canning. For me my plans have more evolved to what grows well here that we like to eat and that will preserve well, plus the salad greens that do so well here and we can eat all summer (although they don’t preserve of course!)
I’ve been learning about food preserving over the past 2 years. As we talked about and ordered this year’s seeds, planning for next winter and spring were definitely taken into account. I’ve also been reading about planting for seeds and hope to do some seed saving for next spring as well!
Cynthia, I didn’t can the zucchini. I shredded it and froze it in 1 cup servings. The pumpkin I did “can” but I didn’t do a hot water bath, I simply put it in cans and froze it as well.
We don’t really preserve to any great extent but we did freeze peaches from our tree (sliced up)and just ran out of those last week. And our potatoes lasted until the new year. It’s a really nice feeling to have remnants from our summer produce for sure!
I’m also planning my garden with preservation in mind. This will be my first year to actually do that. I’m excited about saving my seed and continuing to eat from our garden in the cold of winter.
I am excited to start my garden this year, and hopefully get some preserved. Every year I start the season very ambitious, but totally lose my motivation half way through the season.
Absolutely!!!
We are just finishing up what I “put up” last summer… such a great feeling to eat what we grew all year!
My tomatoes didn’t do well last year, so we didn’t get enough of those canned… praying for a much better harvest this year.
Did you can the zucchini? I didn’t know that you could do that…… I will have to check out your preserving posts to see what you did!
God bless you and your family!
~Cynthia