Plan to Can: How to eat from your garden year round.

If you've been following my blog for any time at all, you know I like to can.  Not in the "If I could spend a day doing anything, I would can" type of way, but in the "I like to know where the food I feed my family is coming from" way.  It's an effort to spend days putting up food, but it's worth it. 

When I plan my garden - or in this year's case - my trip to the auction, I always go with an idea in mind of what I need to put up for the winter.  Yes, it's fun to make pepper jelly and special relishes but that's not what's going to put food on the table all winter.  The bulk of my canning is for food on the table purposes.  Just a small portion goes to making all those weird but beautiful things you see in the Ball Blue Book. 

Since auction day is coming up in a couple of weeks, I've already started my canning plan.  There's nothing hard about making a plan.  You simply figure out how many quarts of an item you use a week or month and plan to can that much or more.  For example, if I use 1 quart of green beans a week, I plan to can 52 quarts to get me through until the next year.  Now of course, you're always dependent on what your garden has produced or in my case, what is being brought to auction. 

This is my canning plan at this point:

30 quarts of carrots
50 quarts of potatoes
20 quarts of applesauce
20 quarts of peaches
20 pints peach salsa
50 quarts of spaghetti sauce
20 pints of pizza sauce
25 quarts of sauce and peppers (like Oliverio's)
25 pints of peppers
20 quarts of salsa
20 pints of strawberry or tomato jelly (I may be too late for strawberry and believe it or not, you can make tomatoes taste like strawberry jelly by using jello)
10 pints of pepper jelly

I'll also plan on making a turn of vegetable sandwich spread from the ends of all the veggies.  I was given that recipe and the tomato jelly recipe from a patient last year.  One of the best benefits of working home health is getting to meet old farmer's wives who have great canning recipes. 

If there's a great deal of green beans, squash or corn, I'll probably go ahead and can them as well, but I'm actually pretty well stocked with those right now. 

Going with a plan will give me an idea of what I need to pick up at the auction.  Of course, depending on prices, I may get more or less of what my plan is and that's OK.  It's all about being flexible and working with what you can get. 


What are you going to can this year?

Summer Fun..... and a garden update.

We have been having a lot of fun with our friends this Summer, despite the rainy weather. 

Here's a peek at some of our fun:

Swimming with our cousins.

My nephew Eli turned 5.

Servolution with our church - passing out free water at the parade.



More Servolution fun - a free car wash.  Talk about freaking people out!

Old chickens....

And new chickens...

Soap making with the girls - so much fun!

And finally, the garden. 

Look at that beautiful corn!

John, our garden helper.

Zucchini

We totally beat "Knee high by the 4th of July" this year!

All this rain has been great for the garden - and the weeds!  I've given up on weeding the potatoes.  At this point I'm pretty sure I'll tear the plants out with the weeds.  I'm already getting tomatoes and different squash from the garden and since the corn is already tasseling out, I'm pretty sure we'll be picking corn in about three weeks. 

It may be a wet Summer, but it's still a fun one!

My garden experiment

This rain was making me crazy this spring.  Ronnie couldn't get a good day to put the electric fence up, which meant I couldn't get the plants in. And I had to get the plants in before we left for the beach.  Had to.
.
We learned years ago that the deer were in the woods lurking, just waiting for me to plant their delicious feast. 

Solution:  I used the giant flower boxes on my front porch this year.  Why should I go to the expense of buying flowers when I have all these beautiful vegetables just waiting for some good dirt?  I chose to plant my lettuce because it doesn't root to deeply and it should be convenient to get a salad from the front porch.

Here's how it turned out:

As of now, I have mixed feelings.  The left side grows better than the right side.  I  think my lettuce would be larger if it were in the garden instead.  It is also taking a ton of water to keep the dirt moist - much more than when I had flowers in it.   Lastly, I miss my pretty flowers.  They really added some nice color to the front.

Not all of my schemes work out. 

Next year, I'll stick with flowers.

It's Garden Time.

I ran into my former Nursing instructor from 1990 at Freed's today.  I was schlepping through with the boys and a double decker flat wagon full of lettuce, tomatoes, broccoli and all kinds of wonderful vegetables.  After a nice little chat, while the boys played in the rocks & mud, we went our separate ways.  I giggled to myself, wondering what she thought.  Then I wondered what my 20+ years ago self would think about my semi-granola life.  I/She would probably say "What happened to your hair?  Whose kids are those throwing rocks?  Why are you buying plants instead of shoes?"  Change is good - including loosing my old Aqua Net infused hairstyle from 1990. 
Our regular plant guy is not well this year so I went to Freed's for our plants.  A little pricier than usual, but still well worth it.  Here's the rundown of what I got today.
1 flat Roma tomatoes
1/2 flat  Better Boys
1 6 pack each pink tomatoes, stripey's and yellow.
1 flat various peppers - green, yellow,red and jalapenos
1/2 flat lettuce, butter crunch & a leaf variety
1 flat strawberries
1 flat broccoli
50 sweet potato plants
I also bought a few of each of the following
celery
cantaloupe
pickling cucumbers
cucumbers
watermelon
yellow watermelon
flat leaf basil
curled parsley
cabbage
We have seed leftover from last year for our beans, zucchini, corn, and pumpkin.  Speedway Market took care of our seed potatoes and sunflower seeds.
I'm excited to try the different tomatoes this year.
Is there anything better than getting your dinner straight from the garden on a summer evening?
I didn't think so.
I'm off to plant sweet potatoes!
Charli