BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Container Gardening Harvesting Your Garden, Do you Can or Freeze?

Hi,
I was wondering if people still harvest their produce and can or freeze it for later use?

I "put up" 21 pints of pickles the other day, and am now making crab apple butter and crab apple jelly for Christmas presents. And, bought some green beans so I could freeze them and eat them this winter.

Just wondering if others do this too?

We make pickles, whole dills and bread and butter slices; salsa; whole tomatoes for sauce; we also pick sand plums and cherries and make jellies.

We freeze black-eyed peas, okra, and corn. This year we had so much rain that our peas didn't do well at all so no peas this year. Good thing we have a few left from last year.

I haven't tried canning but I do use my dehydrator a lot for veggies. If you boil corn for one minute, cut it off the cob and dry in a dehydrator, you have fresh tasting corn all winter long. You can fit dozens of ears of corn into a couple of quart bags.

We had a dehydrator and we used it a couple of times but I guess we are too impatient and want things now! I blanched the corn ears and cut the corn off the ear and froze it. It really didn't take that long.

I'm a big dehydrator fan! I've canned pickles, dehydrated almost everything else. I dry my tomato slices, put them in one-pint bags, and then pulverize when I'm ready to make sauces, ketchups, what-have-you. I stopped trusting freezers when we were hit with a hurricane, a few years back, and we lost everything because the power was out for almost two weeks. All the canned and dehydrated foods were just fine.

I am learning how to pressure can. I know how to cold pack. I also freeze items, but did not freeze anything in 2007 due to learning how to pressure can.
I love food from my garden. The work of canning is so worth it when you open that can in the middle of winter. You sure can't buy food from the store that tastes the same.

Sheri