Eat what you can, can what you can't

 Salsa verde, beet greens, zucchini relish, pickled beets, raspberry vinegar, cucumber relish and pickles.

On inspecting a canning supply display at a local farm store, I saw a cute little saying on a small plaque which said: Eat what you can, can what you can't. That pretty much sums up the summer garden at this point in time. The pests seem to be under control (no more ground chunk battle stories) or the plants are so big it doesn't matter (slug wars are on hold). The weeding is less frenzied, I find that I am weeding to keep the rows looking nice and not necessarily to keep them alive. While I am still sowing seeds here and there occasionally for a fall crop, its not the mad rush of planting that was May and June. The main garden activity now is - preserving.

A harvest of beets minutes after being pulled from the ground and minutes before being pickled.

Growing your own food provides you with such a fulfilling sense of self sufficiency. Eating produce grown with care (as much as one can), without the use of harmful chemicals, picked at its peak and as fresh and as local as you can get- ah what a feeling it is!

Freshly picked tomatillos and Hungarian wax peppers, just before being turned into salsa verde.

While we are utilizing what is currently ready out in the garden to base entire meals out of... what about the rest of the harvest and the rest of the year? At this time of the year gardens everywhere are producing more than their caretakers can consume. Why leave that fulfilling sense of self sufficiency in feeding your family with the fruits of your labor for only a few short months of the year? That's where preserving techniques such as canning come to play. Eat what you can right now, and can what you can't - and eat it in ... for example... February. Eat from your garden year round by taking full advantage of preserving methods now while produce is in full harvest mode.

Changa showing off a milk crate full of cucumbers.

Something new I am trying this year is recording in my garden log the quantities of vegetables I harvest everyday. At the end of the season I will tally things up to get an idea of what the garden was able to produce this year and then eventually compare it to harvests of years to come. I'm also recording what I've been canning. How many jars of this or that and the size of the jars too. This will also be interesting information to have to compare to over time.

Lately I've been canning a lot. Which is my excuse for my less than frequent posts. In the last month I've canned:

6 -pints dilly beans

7- quarts pickled beets

2- quarts beet greens

3- quarts dilled pickles 

9 pints of dilled pickles

4- pints of zucchini relish

22- 1/2 pints of salsa verde

13- 4oz jars raspberry vinegar

25- 1/2 pints cucumber relish

Canned goods from just one month.

This is only the beginning too. The salsa verde- only used up a small fraction of the tomatillos that are growing out there. There are more bean plants growing (succession plantings) and more dilly beans to be canned as a result. The pickled beets only used up half of the beets that are out there. Not to mention the tomatoes (who *cross my fingers* are still disease-free and as happy as can be) that are JUST getting started. Tomatoes alone can consume a lot of canning energy!