DIY -- keeping your food

If you're planning to garden next year, now is the time.
Think about the possibility that you succeed beyond your dreams.
I did that in 2014; I had tons of snow peas; I was eating them every other day for a month.
But snow peas are so much better fresh than preserved.

Other things are different.
Potatoes: don't freeze or can; find a cool dry place to store them.
Onions: ditto.
Beets: pickle the root, blanch and freeze the leaves.
Turnips: slice the root, blanch and freeze, blanch and freeze the leaves.
Carrots: slice, blanch and freeze.
Kale, collards, mustard greens: take leaves off ribs, toss ribs, blanch and freeze.
Chard and spinach: blanch and freeze.
Okra: slice, toss stem ends and tails, blanch and freeze.
Peas, beans, sweet corn: blanch and freeze.
Tomatoes: nah, eat fresh, unless you dry some Roma tomatoes.

Are you getting the point?
There are websites that will give you instructions for anything you can grow.

Now, freezing takes up room and requires electricity.
So you're saying why not can things?
You are probably thinking of using an old-fashioned hot water canner.
Those can produce botulism, especially in beans.
If you want a nice row of Ball jars with lids and rings full of vegetables, you want a pressure canner.
And you need to have it tested to make sure it will hold pressure properly.
That takes an expert.

And anyway, the Mayo Clinic diet says basically eat all the vegetables you can eat.
So if your garden grows more than your freezer will hold, yeah, eat until you bust.

© Patricia Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved