Skip to main content

Adventures in Food Storage #1

My goal with gardening has always been to eat what we grow. Shocking, I know.  Part of that was always meant to be long-term food storage.  Freezing carrots and tomatoes was as far as I ever got and they typically died in their frozen coffin. Who remembers to pull out frozen tomatoes when you have a can right there?

This year, I have started to make moves in this department.  For one, I received a food dehydrator from my in-laws this Christmas.  I have dehydrated everything I can get my hands on, including:
  • Apple
  • Bananas
  • Celery
  • Mushrooms
  • Herbs
  • Pineapple 
  • Pears
  • Beets
I tried some fruit leather type thing, but it had peanut butter in it and just came out off putting for some reason.   I also tried my hand at beef jerky, both classic and teriyaki; I thought they came out pretty well.


I have also checked out some books at the local library to read up on canning, specifically tomatoes and other vegetables.  First, I  want to ensure that I plant tomato varieties that are good for canning and understand some of the intricacies with canning tomatoes (it's not quite like jam, acids and whatnot).  I'm flirting with the idea of buying a pressure canner, as that seems to be a requirement for most vegetables, except tomatoes.  See? Confusing.

Needless to say, I am keeping busy these winter months and desperately willing it to be spring.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Little Review of Smart Gardener

My good friend introduced me to Smart Gardener via Pinterest .  The description was something along the lines of, "this site plans your garden for you."  As a new gardener, I was skeptical.  Sounds a little too good to be true, but I checked it out anyways. At first I was enamored.  It allows for garden planning in 4 steps: 1.  Layout your garden - you are able to choose the square footage of an in-ground garden, or choose from a variety of containers/raised beds.  Cool! 2. Select your plants - this is limited by season, and you cannot mix cool weather and warm weather vegetables.  Not cool!  Varieties of vegetables are also limited if you are looking for something specific, but you can add them manually. 3. View your plan - you get a little image with your selected plants on it, plus the space they require in your garden (square footage), planting depths, seed spacing, plant dimensions, and what to plant next to each other or not (F...
2 comments
Read more

Mr. Stump - You are no longer welcome here

So we have this guy smack in the middle of our pile of dirt.  Mr. Stump. I purchased some Bonide Stump-Out last summer and had my dad drill the necessary holes to use it. Apparently you drill in some v-like holes, mix this stuff with water and pour it in.  I never got around to it, but now that we are wanting to plant, seems like I might want to get on it. After treatment, your stump is supposed to come out -  in 4 to 6 weeks....I just realized this.  But after that 4 to 6 weeks, you can set it on fire to remove the stump.  You heard me:  SET. IT. ON. FIRE. So this weekend, I wiped off our recent snow from the stump and poured this stuff in.  I will post an update in 4-6 weeks when we SET. THE. STUMP. ON. FIRE. ::excitedly clapping hand, not gonna lie::
2 comments
Read more

Why Hello Chives and Strawberries

As of Saturday, we'll have been in our new home three months.  Currently in our new yard, we have a somewhat hideous attempt at a garden.  I'm not sure exactly when this first picture was taken, this was a pic from the original listing.  The split-rail fence has gots to go.  If you take a closer look, you can see that there appears to be a random mishmash of plants in here.  Looks like there is a rosebush (two actually), some green thing (sage bush), and my husband discovered chives and strawberries. Huh.  We've struggled on deciding what to do with this space.  I'm not sure I want my garden around an A/C unit and so far this "garden" is just a hot mess of weeds, rocks, and random plants.  Our current plan is to scrap everything except the strawberries.  I hope to make enough room in the next week or so to put a cucumber and zucchini in the ground, but time is running out.  I also want to enclose the strawberries an...
1 comment
Read more