My Garden Supermarket

This week has been a week where we have been harvesting a lot of food from the garden. I haven’t been canning, freezing or dehydrating anything that I am harvesting right now. Some of it will keep without refrigeration and others we are eating as soon as we pick it from the garden.

Why Not Can, Freeze or Dehydrate?

My mother used to do a lot of canning and freezing, but often she didn’t cook the food she grew immediately. Instead, she put it up so that she could brag about how much she had canned or frozen. Often she would say, “You’ll be glad this winter that we have this.” Often, however, the food that she froze or canned didn’t get eaten at all. Too often, the food in the freezer would get freezer-burned and had to be given to the livestock or thrown into the compost pile.

My dad often commented on this flaw in her thinking and suggested that we should eat the vegetables when they were fresh rather than let them waste away on the shelf or in the freezer. I try to take this advice and utilize as many fresh homegrown vegetables in my diet as possible.

Right now we have a variety of vegetables that we are using. Here’s what we had coming from our garden that we have used this week.

Potatoes

We have two different crops of potatoes growing. Some are growing in fabric bags and others we planted in the ground. The ones growing in the ground are still growing, but we’re harvesting the early red Norlands grown in the bags. We are harvesting two to three bags every day and eat them with other vegetables. These potatoes are early varieties that don’t store long term so we either need to use them if possible. If we can’t eat all of them, I will need to either can them, freeze them, or dehydrate them for long-term storage.

Garlic Scapes

We grow hardneck garlic which provides us with scapes every year. Scapes are the flower stalks of the garlic and they come out a few weeks before the garlic harvest. I have learned to use these scapes in cooking. They add a mild garlic flavor in stir-fries and other cooked garlic dishes. I love sprinkling chopped garlic scapes on casseroles. They are a great addition to scalloped potatoes.

Scapes will keep in the refrigerator for a week or so. I did put some in the freezer to save for later. Freezing them is as easy as chopping them and throwing the chopped scapes into a freezer bag or container.

Garlic

We harvested our garlic this past week. The garlic takes a while to prepare to keep throughout the winter. I pulled it from the garden and laid it out on a tarp in the sun and rain until the leaves were dried and then cut the bulbs. I then cut the roots from the bulbs and cleaned off the majority of the dirt from the bulbs. I then laid the garlic in a single layer to dry. Some of the garlic that has been nicked or otherwise damaged, I will use immediately or I’ll dry to make garlic powder, but most of it I’ll use fresh in cooking or when canning tomato products.

Cabbage

We have a cabbage that we have harvested this spring and We’ve used it cooked in a couple of meals already. I still need to use some of it to make cole slaw. Because there is only two of us, the cabbage goes a long way. We’ll be growing more this fall.

Chinese Cabbage

We grew too much of this all at once and ended up not being able to use it up all. We had one meal of it, and it seemed bitter. We gave most of it to the chickens. We will try growing some more later in the fall.

Lettuce

Our head lettuce came on all at once and we couldn’t use all of it before it turned to mush. What I did have, I enjoyed. I will plant more in the fall, but I will try to stagger the harvest more.

Broccoli

We had two plants from which we harvested the main harvest a couple of weeks ago. Since then, I have been harvesting side shoots. I’ll be making a quiche with these this week.

Again, I intend to plant more of this brassica this fall.

Hot Peppers

We’ve picked a couple of ready hot peppers already so we have used them to season several dishes especially Mexican dishes. There’s more of these to come.

Not All Are Ready to Harvest

As you can see, we have a variety of vegetables coming from the garden already, and even more to come.

Tomatoes, green beans, sweet peppers, and sweet potatoes are still on the horizon. We’ll eat as many of these fresh as well. There’s nothing like fresh ready to eat vegetables from your own backyard garden.

Are you putting in a vegetable garden this year? I have written several books that can help you get started. All are available on Amazon.

Gourmet Weeds

https://shop.ingramspark.com/b/084?Bdm3q5kcr0zYvywdeuStOBmX4q0IYJBlMCeUAPi5FNL

Simply Vegetable Gardening

The Survival Garden

The Four Seasons Vegetable Garden

Help From Kelp

Using Diatomaceous Earth Around the House and Yard

https://www.amazon.com/Using-Diatomaceous-Earth-Around-House/dp/1329798775/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=Nrcr1&content-id=amzn1.sym.cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf_rd_p=cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf_rd_r=146-8914817-1931602&pd_rd_wg=lPPWg&pd_rd_r=623a17aa-c969-4f8c-ab04-84c3050f6817&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk