I am starting to plan my garden for this spring. We looked at the various veggies we like to eat fresh in the summer but also what veggies we like preserved for winter eating.
For fresh veggies we like lettuces and a variety of greens. We also like a whole assortment of peppers and tomatoes and cucumbers. Not to mention the herbs we really like. For stuff we want to preserve for winter we like tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic, peas and beans, plus squash. we’d like to attempt corn and a few other veggies. I’m hoping to do some fancy eggplant varieties again.
We have to consider that we’ll fight the rabbits and potentially other animals. Squirrels have found their way into the yard recently and have decimated my pears and peaches.
We really want to focus on things we’ll actually use- what is the point of preservation if it isn’t used? I picked up a dehydrator and hope to dry a lot of cherry tomatoes again. We used all of them quickly and they were really very nice. Between that and making my own paprika my dehydrator got a good workout in years past. I also like to freeze rather than can a lot of things that would be traditionally canned- green beans and tomatoes being one example. I did two versions of frozen tomatoes- whole and crushed. The whole tomatoes were blanched and then frozen whole in the freezer and then 4 or 6 put into a vacuum bag before being put into the freezer. The crushed tomatoes were blanched and then crushed in a pot before being ladled into vacuum bags and sealed.
I ended up not preserving any eggplant- we did eat a lot of it in when it was fresh.
I’ve never tried to grow squash but really want to try the honeynut squash. It’s a smaller relative to the butternut and supposedly preserves well. I’ll likely keep some whole but will freeze some mashed.
These are just some loose plans and we’ll see how my wife and my health is this spring when it will come time to working in the garden. It’s been a long time since I’ve had the time and energy to work on the garden. I might not be able to get the garden exactly how I want it but we’ll see.