27 August 2018

Frugal food management

Most of the year we grow food in the backyard that will feed us on a daily basis. Whether it's vegetables, herbs, fruit, eggs, or honey from just down the road, the work we do in our garden pays off in the form of fresh food that we know has not been sprayed or "treated" in any way. It is planted in rich soil, fertilised with seaweed, comfrey, blood and bone or manure, watered with rainwater from our tanks and when it's ripe, we pick it and eat it fresh.  Except when we don't. We also preserve, pickle and freeze some of our food so we can eat or drink it much later in the year.

Spicy pineapple relish.



I don't remember what our first crops were here in this garden but I do know that over the 21 years we've been gardening here, we've grown what we know we'll eat fresh. We also have a number of crops that we eat fresh but then process the excess in some way so it will feed us months later. Last week I wrote about our garlic crop and how that will see us through the year - we'll eat our garlic  as well as keep enough to plant a crop for next year. We also grow lemons and oranges. We eat most of the oranges fresh during winter, and I use some for baking. The lemons give us two good harvests a year. We use some as they're picked but we also juice about 100 lemons from the winter harvest, pack the juice in plastic bottles and freeze it to use for summer cordial.



We use berries and flowers from our elder tree and there's always plenty to share with the wild birds that visit.
Some years we grow rosellas and make jam or cordial with the fruit.

Rosellas and elderberries are both stored in the freezer until we're ready to use them.

We have passionfruit that is eaten fresh, and frozen for later use. There is nothing like the sharp, aromatic taste of passionfruit and it can be used in fruit salads and drinks as well as for baking and curd. Our elderberry tree gives us enough berries for winter tonics, and flowers for elderflower syrup and cordial as well as hundreds of berries for the wild birds that visit the tree daily. And the ginger we grow here is used fresh in cooking and baking, and is fermented to make ginger beer.

Ginger is used in cooking and fermented in ginger beer.

Two or three cayenne chilli bushes, which usually last about two years if I cut them back in late winter, give us enough chillies for cooking during the year and enough chillies to make about six jars of chilli jam. That means we have that delicious spicy jam during the year and we don't have to buy it for $8 a jar. We also grow beetroot and cucumbers which are eaten fresh and pickled for year-long eating.


These are sweet Hungarian peppers.
This type of housekeeping and food management also applies to cleaning products too. I make soap, laundry liquid, a Gumption-type paste and vinegar cleaner.  All these do an excellent job and cost a bare fraction of the commercial products bought at a supermarket.


I know not everyone can grow their own vegetables or fruit and if you're in that boat, look around for cheap boxes of seasonal vegetables like oranges, lemons, onions, beetroot, or a couple of kilos of chillies or garlic and you too can do what I do. If you can buy cheap seasonal produce, doing the work of jamming, pickling, freezing etc. will save you a ton of money and you'll have the best preservative-free products.



This year I bought enough strawberries from our local strawberry farm to make jam for us for a year. I also have two bags of dried apricots to make apricot jam. Sometimes, in mid-January, I buy a cheap box of good peaches and either make peach jam or I bottle peaches for eating later in the year. Two-one kilo bags of small onions will give us enough pickled onions for a year, one carton of cheap late season tomatoes gives us enough tomato relish or tomato sauce for a year. When I picked up Tricia from Armidale a few weeks back I bought a large box of green apples at Stanthorpe for $7. We've had a lot of apple desserts, eaten the apples raw and I still have half a box of apples that I'll stew and freeze this week. Those apples will be used in cakes, pancakes and desserts.


All the prep and cooking of these sauces and jams is easy and will only take an hour or so but you end up with enough product for many months.  Juicing 100 lemons takes a few sessions, even with our fabulous juicer, but we know it gives us all the lemon juice we'll use all year.

Rosella cordial.
Silverbeet/chard and kale can be blanched and frozen.

For me the work is well worth what I get out of it. If you've never organised your produce and kitchen work like this, I encourage you to give it some thought and start with two things that will be easy to make.  Find recipes that suit you, tweak them to make them exactly right for you and your family, and then add more when you can.  It's a great way to provide excellent food for your table and you'll be saving money as you do it.

I'd love to know what you make to put aside for later. Are you preserving, canning, drying and freezing what you grow or buy cheaply at a market?


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43 comments

  1. Hi Rhonda, You are so organized with your food. It's very impressive to see the photos and read all that you are doing. My Meyer Lemon tree has stopped fruiting. (after twenty years of being productive.)I don't know why;I may have to replace it. I have oranges, limes, tangerines, grapefruit, apricots, and blood oranges. I usually eat all of those fresh. I am harvesting zucchini now, and hope to also have a few pumpkins and winter squash in the next few months. I stew peaches and nectarines that I buy for .50 a lb. at Valley Produce. They excellent specials each week. I just get what's on sale and in season and eat it. My fridge is small, so there is not much room for storage. Fortunately, we have fresh produce at excellent prices year round here in California. We are spoiled.

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    1. Blood oranges!! I love them but it's too warm here to grow them. 😔 Lucky you.

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  2. Goodmorning Rhonda,
    In the past I’ve only grown a few things like cherry toms, passionfruit, Asian greens, silverbeet herbs and our few citrus trees, all except for the passionfruit vine, are in pots and as such I’ve never had an abundance of produce, just enough to supplement our grocery shop. However things are changing in our garden, we are in the process of building raised garden beds and I really can’t wait until I have a bumper crop of something that I will need to preserve it. I am so looking forward to it. Fi

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  3. It's a lovely feeling when you make
    something yourself,it is always
    worth the effort.

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  4. I started making pickled beetroot some years ago, and it is so much nicer than shop bought tinned beetroot, that my family complain when we run out, and I have to buy tinned! LOL

    Mostly I buy a heap of it fresh when I see it on sale, which happened just a couple of weeks ago, I spied it for $1.69/kg, so I bought a bit over 2kg of it, and it made 11 jars of pickled beetroot, it probably cost me less than $5 for those 11 jars.

    I also grow long red chilli's and make my own sweet chilli sauce, which is easy to do, and yummy. I just throw the chilli's into a repurposed plastic bag after I have picked them, and pop them into the freezer, and make the sweet chilli sauce from the frozen chilli's, it doesn't get much easier than that.

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    1. Hi Cheryl, I freeze chillies and capsicums like that too. It's a great way to save your produce until you have enough for a batch of something.

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  5. Wow! I am always so impressed with all you do! I live in a city of 3 million people in a small apt. with no balcony so no growing opportunity for me I'm afraid. I do try to stock up and freeze certain things when the prices are lowest. This week I'll buy more sweet peppers to freeze as I use them a lot and they can be super expensive come the Winter. I also buy a 10 pound bag of onions for about $2 in October and I'll freeze and/or caramelize most of them. I have very limited freezer space so I really do have to pick and choose what will offer the best return.
    I have got two bottles of vanilla essence started for this year's baking (one bottle with rum and one using vodka). I've also started making my own yogurt again when milk is on at a good price and I'm going to make a batch of HM hummus later this week. Really looking at what I can make rather than buy and then I try to make sure that nothing goes to waste.
    Thank you for all the wonderful tips.

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    1. Excellent Margie! That's exactly the kind of thing I'd be doing if I lived in an apartment. I hope some of our apartment dwellers read your comment and are inspired to try something themselves.

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  6. This year I have aubergines and long, long red chillies as we have had such a fabulous summer. The usual tomatoes, beetroot, onions, herbs, garlic, cabbages, spuds, as well as soft fruits - bags full, frozen for winter, plus a ton of pureed apple, still some from last year. 4 sorts of chutney made, jam to follow. I was also lucky to receive 7 gooseberry bushes from a friend, plus a thornless blackberry - although we have kilos of wild blackberry in the hedges around our field. I made cherry vodka and brandy - the cherries are dipped into chocolate at Christmas. We have figs and elderberries to come, eggs all year and some lamb in a couple of weeks. We are so lucky!! I count my blessings every day, harvest time is wonderful - and I do not waste a single thing!

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    1. It sounds like you've had a great growing year. Keep up the good work. 🏅

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  7. Hi Rhonda,

    I pit cherries from our trees and freeze them, peaches also. I make batches of pesto while the basil is in season and freeze it too. I just acquired two huge lots of vacola jars so this Summer will see us bottling enough tomatoes for the year, and also some fruit if we don't eat it all!

    I save fennel seeds for use in cooking and tea and want to make more effort this year to dry other herbs for tea. We save our lemon juice in ice cube trays for when you just need a small amount in a recipe.

    Madeleine

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  8. I feel like I don't do "much" preserving... but when I thought about it, I do preserve quite a bit! The ones I probably do the most are:
    Oven roasted tomato puree/sauce/passata. I got this idea from River Cottage Veg Everyday, and after nabbing a vintage Moulinex at a garage sale, this is much easier!
    I also do cold pack tomatoes in my Fowler unit - I freeze them if I don't have enough ripe ones for a batch. They are easy to peel then.
    Pumpkins get cut up, cooked in the pressure cooker then pureed and frozen - I have heaps of pumpkin puree in the freezer, it goes in all the baked goods for the kid's lunchboxes. We always seem to grow so many pumpkins so I had to do something with it!
    I was just given a dehydrator this year so I'm just learning with it. So far I've made parsley and celery flakes.

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    1. You've got a very productive kitchen Rebecca. That's excellent.

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  9. Most of what we eat we grow and / or process. We raise our own beef, pork, eggs, and I just got a milk cow which I milk along with our goats. I make our soap, bread, and nearly everything we eat from scratch... until Daddy died, we had fresh cornmeal from his corn. I wild craft (gather fro
    Nature) greens, apples, and berries. I think people giggle when they drive past me on the roadside picking like a mad woman. I'd like to know more about wild foods, so that is my goal for the winter --- read all I can about them. There is so much food available if we only know where to look!!! I am envious of your lemons and oranges!!! Wish I could grow them!!!

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    1. Beautiful work, Matty. I'd like to have a cuppa with you to discuss what you're doing.

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  10. I love seeing and hearing all about the delicious things you make in your kitchen Rhonda. I haven't done much preserving yet, I freeze produce I buy cheaply and I have made cordial using your recipe, which was lovely. I like your suggestion of choosing just 2 items to try and make, and go from there. Makes it seem far less daunting, as I have a lot to learn in this area, it can seem overwhelming. Thanks for your gentle encouragement! Kelly

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  11. All look so good. The photo going up from the buttom, number six. People around here call those berries either service berries or June berries.
    Coffee is on

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  12. So far my garden hasn't been overly abundant, but I love eating the fresh strawberries, tomatoes, lettuce, and my favorite green beans that grow in it!

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  13. Hello Rhonda :)
    As I rent and move quite often I don't have a lot growing myself. Parsley,Basil & Chives growing in foam boxes so they can be transported with me. But food seems to spring at me from all corners anyway. My elderley Mum seems to buy a bit too much stuff (Bananas, tomatoes etc) that she doesn't manage to get through, so "I'll give it to Ange, she'll use it).lol. The last house we rented had a few banana palms up the back corner so these were utilized. The current house we're in has a huge Passionfruit vine that this year didn't know when to stop fruiting. A good friend of mine lives in a rural situation near Samford and they bring up fresh grown oranges and lemons for me when they visit. So consequently my chest freezer gets a lot of use. When I moved up to the Bay, my Mum & Dad had a lovely sweet grapefruit tree growing, I picked all the grapefruit and no sooner we had a large storm and the next door neighbours gum tree cam down and wiped it out. So I taught myself how to make Marmalade (I'm still getting through it). Banana bread, jams etc were made with the bananas. Parsley, Basil & Chives are dried and stocked up for cooking. And the other day I had a crack at making Passionfruit Cordial and Banana, Passionfruit & Coconut roll-ups). I share my cooking with Mum as due to medical issues she cannot stand long enough anymore to do so, so all her leftovers are actually returned, but in a different form. Not a lot goes to waste here. I've just bought myself my first compost tumbler so scraps will be returned to the garden beds, and my next project will be getting some medium size tub planters to hopefully grow some cherry tomatoes in as Mum like to eat them as lollies. I snuck your recipe for the Impossible quiche the other night and it was beaut. Thanks for all your posts and ideas.

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  14. I am constantly making jams, marmalades, dehydrated veges and pickles from the surplus fruit and veg I get given and receive from the weekly food swaps I attend. Strawberry jam, plum jam, orange marmalade and Grapefruit marmalade and cumquat marmalade from the neighbours fruit; blackberry jam from foraged Blackberries. Raspberry jam from my berries. Eggs from the back yard chickens each day, honey from my hives.
    Soup has been easy to make using the dried veges-mushrooms, capsicum, zucchini (the seeds are icky. Must remember to de seed the bigger zucchinis), tomatoes (turned into tomato powdee as well). Dried apples, pears and kiwi fruit make a sweet treat.
    Friends helped plant around 40 fruit trees yesterday. So if they survive possums, bats, cockatoos, rosellas, rats and whatever else I might end up with a year round supply of fresh fruit to preserve and share.
    Keep your fingers crossed.
    Claire in Melbourne

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  15. We have all this in front of us at our new place (which officially settled today in our names). I think this will be the year of prepping old tired soil rather than crops per se. I think we will be doing more of what Margie from Toronto has been doing this year and settle for crops next year.

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  16. Our vegetable garden was a complete loss this year due tp 50 days without rain and hot temperatures for those days. However, our blackberry has performed well and I shall process those for cordials, vinegar, vodka and pies. Soon harvesting elderberries and sloes. Just harvested wild damsons.

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  17. This winter we planted an IQ mandarin, a lemonade tree and transplanted a lime tree. I am waiting for them to produce. I have had a passionfruit that did very well for a while and then the fruit was not right. I also have some herbs. I often feel I am hopeless with my food economy. I do make relish and today I bought a kg bag of frozen blueberries for $4. They are to become jam. Thank you for all your inspiration.

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  18. What beautiful photos. I so admire your attitude towards hard work!

    I follow grocery specials closely, and when there's a really good sale (or an unexpected markdown!), I stock up on produce and freeze it. This past spring, I picked up a few pints of strawberries when they were on sale for 99 cents. We had to go back to that supermarket a few days later, for a reason I can't remember (usually, it's once a week and we're done!), and to my surprise, those strawberries were marked down to 3/$1!!!I bought seven dollars' worth and spent the rest of the day freezing them on trays and turning the rest into six or seven jars of freezer jam. I was *very* pleased with that find, because it was the best deal on produce I've ever gotten!

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  19. I'm sure we are all celebrating the rain over the weekend. I live in a rain shadow but was lucky to get 15ml. Woohoo!! After no rain for 2mths in a part of SEQld that should never dry out, it has been such a relief to damp down the dust and slightly relieve the fire threat.

    As to what I harvest for the freezer.....mango is the bulk crop, closely followed by tomatoes and citrus.

    I have 5 mango trees, sell the best of the organic crop as fresh boxed fruit or frozen 2&4lt cubes. I then peel and slice the remainder for myself for year round ice cream or fruit salad ingredients.

    Tomatoes have been rather hit and miss last couple of years since the parrots, possums and bush rats got a taste for my delicious fruit. However this winter I built a frame using conduit and white shade cloth to completely cover the whole crop. Yep, that fixed 'em! :D Now the young plants all have fruit coming! Yippee!

    My one Seville orange tree produces heavily, bearing around 3 milk crates full of dark orange coloured, very juicy fruit which I turn into marmalade.

    From time to time there will be a whole host of other garden fruits, vegetables and herbs, but all in small amounts.

    ..... except for lemons! How could I forget the lemons!! The poor little tree is ladden to the ground continually with bright yellow smooth skinned juicy and not overly tart tasting, that I squeeze to freeze in ice cube trays before stacking into cream containers. Or I grate the skin first and freeze it flat in ziplock bags so I always have lemon (or orange for that matter) zest onhand.

    My pawpaws are plentiful but always eaten fresh. Not sure what I would make if I had an over supply. Pumpkins were prodigious this year with several sitting on the garden bench. They make a lovely flavourful soup with a couple of potatoes added. Or I will slice up half a pumpkin to bake long and slow. Double yum!

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  20. I make pesto and and sloe gin at home. I love the idea of just trying two things as it does get overwhelming wanting to do so many things. My two will be blackberry jam and elderflower syrup. Nia

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  21. In the US northwest, we've put up greens - chard, mustard, beet - and beetroot, sweet corn, green beans, tomatoes (as sauce), potatoes, currants, and sugar snap peas from the garden, plus cherries from a friend's tree, some wild blackberries (as jam), and blueberries from the store when they came in season. In the fall we'll pick apples from abandoned pioneer trees and make spiced crabapples. I never pickled beetroot before but you inspired me, so I did and it's good! Thank you!

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  22. We keep cooking apples for a long time in storage for use through the winter. We freeze gooseberries, blackcurrants,rhubarb,plums and harvest pears which we usually eat fresh. We eat lots of raspberries fresh and freeze some for homemade ice cream. I will soon be picking elderberries for syrup/ tonic and we make elderflower cordial.
    When the Seville oranges appear in the shops in January I make marmalade and use excess cucumbers for bread and butter pickles.
    I dry bay leaves for cooking and use fresh herbs from the garden for as long as I can.
    This year we made a decision not to grow any vegetables but will do again in the future. We forage for blackberries and hazelnuts. There is more we could do and hope to do in the future. I enjoy reading about your preserving/ storage and everyone else's too. I love the feeling of squirreling goodies away for future use.

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  23. Everything looks so beautiful, Rhonda. I have never heard of rosellas. What do they taste like? I canned crab apple jelly and put up apple butter so far. The people across the street from us moved in about a month ago. The people before them planted tomatoes. The new people are just letting them rot. I may go ask for some for spaghetti sauce. Hopefully I can get pears soon to can. We moved in over Christmas and had so many things to do to the house that we could not get our garden in this year. But...we have all the wood to start four raised beds for next year. I can't wait. As an aside, I noticed in one of your pictures here how handsome Hanno is. But then, he has a beautiful wife!! Thanks for sharing.

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    1. Hi Cate. Rosellas are in the Hibiscus family and grow in warm climates. They are very tart and taste a bit like plums mixed with raspberries.

      Waiting a year to start a garden is a good move. You'll have a full year to see where the sun and shade are during the seasons and if there are any flooding problems. Don't forget to start your compost - you could do that now so you'll have compost ready when you start the garden.

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    2. Good idea about the compost. I had not thought of that. Thank you!!

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  24. I try to grow small quantities so that I can use up the produce when it is fresh and have more variety. Occasionally when I find something marked down I will make some preserves, and once a year I make chutney, which is always better home made. I found some mushrooms marked down a couple of weeks ago, and sliced and froze them, I never tried that before, and they are great.

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  25. Dear Donna,
    I have a garden and I try as much as possible to keep for the winter what Mother Nature offers me. I make canned green beans, peas, tomatoes, cabbage, carrots, strawberry jams, raspberries, currants, currants from my garden. I also make recipes in nature: blueberries, raspberries, apples, mushrooms that I can preserve or preserve. I make pickles in lacto fermentation. I make pumpkin soup, vegetables that I sterilize too. I also freeze turnips, cabbage, tomatoes, peas, beans, zucchini ... I also dry beans, chickpeas, onions, shallots, garlic. In short all that can be produced in the garden. My husband will also glean in the fields of potatoes, onions. For fruit in the garden, it's not terrible this year, cherries and gooseberries have been devoured by birds. I also have plum trees, I've frozen a little I would like an apple tree, a poiriuer.
    Thank you for your post which are always very interesting. I now regularly make lemonade with ginger leaven. Thank you allst your good recipes
    with kind regards, Françoise, Dunkerque, Hauts de France

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  26. Hi great to see someone else preserves as much as I do. I have run out of freezer room and now my pantry shelves are sagging with pickles and chutneys I am resorting to drying. Mushrooms are drying on our woodburner and I may try apple rings.

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  27. Living on a boat I am dependant on buying or bartering for fresh produce when I can. We rely on canning for a great deal of our ships stores-we reckon to be able to live-albeit rather frugally-for about six months on what we have stored on our 40 foot sailboat! Just now I have finished making French Onion Soup from alarge net that I bought very cheaply in a local warehouse. That joind the Crrot and ginger soup made earlier this year. I put a notice on our local for sale and wanted web page and got lots of plums that are now jam in my lockers- I gave the donor three jars in return for the fruit. The apple harvest will be soon and we have a local community orchard where we can pick for free-last year I put up 30 jars of apple which we are still enjoying in crumbles, cakes etc. When the supermarket has an offer or a mark down I can whatever meat is on offer-meatballs at £1 for 12 on their sell by date filled a big corner of the locker... I pickle, ferment, jam, can, dry and confit just about everything. It really is so satisfying to know that we have good, home produced food that was made for very little money. I love what you do Rhonda- it sure makes me miss a garden! Gerry

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  28. I freeze chilli's but other than that with only a small garden and a family of 7 we eat the rest fresh. If I have a glut of something like cucumbers I like to bless someone with it. They are mostly appreciative. Rhonda, I'm interested how do you blanch and freeze your silverbeet. Also how do you use it in cooking?

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    1. Hi Therese. I steam or boil washed and trimmed silverbeet. Bring the water to the boil, add the leaves and cook for 3 -4 minutes. I also used cooked silverbeet in a pie with eggs and cheese. Here is my guide to blanching: https://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/2011/11/blanching-vegetables.html

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  29. I live in an apartment so I have very limited amount of space to grow but I manage to plant lots of herbs and I dry them for winter, I make lots of basil pesto and freeze it. I have two boxes where I grow sweet potatoes and few containers with beets. I love preserving so I buy fruits and veggies on sale and make jams, juices, pickles and tomato sauce. I also make herb infused oils and freeze lots of fruits. This way I save money and the food taste so good in cold months.

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  30. We don't grow much of anything anymore, really. Just one orange tree that produces well, a newly planted pomegranate that won't give much for a couple of years, and plans to add two more fruit trees (likely Meyer lemon and Mission fig). Living in a citrus town, we can get citrus cheaply (or free from neighbors, at times). Canning has never been my thing, but I do make small batches of jam, usually a new fruit each month or so, and just enough for my husband as the rest of us don't each it much. That is just kept in the refrigerator. But produce is so abundant here in So Cal (and water so expensive) that I mostly focus my efforts elsewhere. I store wheat berries so I can make bread, and oats to make granola. I have many storage buckets, actually -- hard wheat berries, soft wheat berries, rolled oats, quick oats, cornmeal, rice, beans, lentils, sugar, etc. I bake for the freezer, cook broths and soups for the freezer, cook meats ahead and freeze them, etc. I love reading what everyone else does!!

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  31. Love your blog! Life is so different (but still so similar in many ways) here in the Rocky Mountains. I live in the potato country of Idaho. I forage for asparagus in May - it grows wild on the roadsides here. I've frozen zoodles(zucchini noodles), corn, peas, beans, asparagus. I've canned raspberries, tomatoes and applesauce so far. I made raspberry jam. I've dehydrated apples, grapes, bananas and will do onions and potatoes when they are ready in a month. I dehydrated soup mix veggies: zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes. I also vacuum seal dried foods in canning jars: pasta, rice, beans, wheat, oatmeal, etc. I will be gleaning the potato fields this fall. It's just so satisfying to see a full pantry as our winter approaches. We can cope without power, or weather storms or even deal with minor financial issues without blinking an eye. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. I pick up tips all the time. (And I'm so jealous of the citrus and other "exotic" things that you blog about!)

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  32. I grow tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, kale, a variety of peppers, herbs, green beans, cucumbers, lettuce and blackberries in our small city lot space.

    I make/freeze about 50 quarts of ratatouille with this recipe and we enjoy it until next harvest. https://www.salon.com/2010/08/07/ratatouille_weapons_grade_style/

    Some of that I make plain, some is Italian and some is spice with jalapeno and habanera for winter chili with lots of pinto beans added.

    We make all our own salsa.

    I blanch/freeze excess green beans and kale.

    I made/canned low sugar blackberry jam and blackberry syrup.

    Excess tomatoes get stewed way down for thick canned tomato sauce.

    And the rest is eaten fresh!

    LOVE my garden output and I can't wait to retire and garden even more biointensively on our small paid-for land.

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  33. I've frozen two cup bags of blueberries and peach slices (10 lb of each) here in Canada, to use over the winter in oatmeal and muffins. I'll also stock up on winter squash and potatoes at great fall prices, which store easily in my cold back hallway

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