how does your garden grow? june 21, 2011

Lettuce and flowers in flower bed

Come here on Tuesdays to read about my vegetable garden project and share yours.

My Garden
May the canning and preserving begin! I’m so excited to start steaming and freezing veggies and watch my freezer stash build. It’s a great feeling knowing that the work I put in every day is providing my family with organic vegetables year round!

I use a variety of methods to preserve food from our garden – water bath canning, pressure canning, dehydrating, steam juicing, and steaming/blanching & freezing. Most of my time is spent steaming veggies and freezing them, either individually or in bags of mixed veggies. I have a steamer from Ikea that holds enough veggies to fill 2 to 3 quart bags which I’ll do a few afternoons each week.

When the tomatoes start ripening (only a few yellow cherries right now), I collect them in gallon freezer bags in the freezer and do a canning session when I have at least 5 gallon freezer bags. Freezing the tomatoes first prevents the tomatoes from going to waste; freezing also releases water from the tomatoes making the final canned product much less watery.

Making pickles is another big canning project. I expect to have enough cucumbers by the end of the week to do my first batch. While I love Nourishing Traditions, the traditional way of lacto-fermenting vegetables hasn’t worked well for me. I don’t have room to store lots of veggies in jars in the fridge, and my family hasn’t liked the taste of the lacto-fermented vegetables. Instead, I have a few stand-by recipes that use vinegar – bread and butter pickles, relish, and dill pickles.

I can’t wait to get started on preserving food!

Share your vegetable garden progress in the comments!

Also part of the Homestead Barn Hop, Monday Mania, and Garden Tuesday.