Most gardeners will agree that the most satisfying time of year is when you get to harvest the foods you have worked so hard to grow. This is the absolute BEST part of having your own garden. Presenting your family with a side dish or meal made from homegrown vegetables feels so satisfying and rewarding. I’ve noticed that the fresh vegetables from my garden tend to taste better than grocery store fare as well plus you can save a lot of money by using your own home grown produce.

There is another fabulous way to use your garden veggies that people don’t often think about. What do you do if you have a monster tomato plant and you have 30-40 tomatoes all ripen at the same time? How about having 10 giant cucumbers all perfectly ripe but you get sick at the thought of eating another cucumber salad? Or flocks of bush beans that you didn’t realize should have been staggered several weeks apart? I have a wonderful solution … BUILD UP YOUR FOOD STORAGE!

Garden vegetables are some of the easiest things to bottle, freeze, dry, etc. Last year I bottled whole tomatoes, fresh salsa, and pickles. I froze bags of beans and peas. I haven’t experimented with dehydrating vegetables yet but I’ve heard it is another very good method of preservation. If you are working on building any type of long term food storage program, these home-grown items will be invaluable to you. They are organic, preserved fresh from your garden, have no mysterious things added to them, they retain their nutrients better than store-bought items, and the best part is they are FREE! How can you beat that?

So if you are looking to build up some food storage, consider taking your excess garden vegetables and preserve them using some of these methods. And maybe, just maybe, next year you will find yourself planting extras of certain items so that you can have enough to stock up your food storage shelves even more!