As mid-summer is approaching, you have probably begun to harvest some of your vegetables. This is the absolute BEST part of having your own garden. It is so satisfying to put a meal on the table and know that you actually grew the ingredients yourself. I've noticed that the fresh vegetables from my garden tend to taste better than grocery store fare as well.

Today I want to talk about another GREAT use of your garden vegetables that a lot of people don't 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? What about when you have 10 giant cucumbers sitting in your fridge waiting to be eaten and you can't stomach the idea of another cucumber sandwich? Or flocks of bush beans that you didn't realize should have been staggered several weeks apart? I have the solution ... BUILD 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 peas and beans. I attempted to dry some herbs but I haven't quite figured that out properly yet. I'll definitely be researching that this year as my dill is getting out of control! If you are working on building any type of food storage program, these home-grown items will be invaluable to you. They are organic, preserved fresh from your garden, 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 end up with an abundance of items you can't finish up this season, look into some of these ways of preserving your harvest. And maybe, just maybe, next year you will find yourself planting extras of certain items so that you can have enough to store even more!