How do you handle your excess produce?

What vegetables are you growing? You could make chutneys or jams and sauces without a pressure cooker. I preserved some of my Chilli's in olive oil last year, that works with all kinds of peppers. Just make sure you make air holes with a pin or knife in them so they don't float on top as then they go mouldy.

Hi Dragon, actually I have no experience with all these, since i do not have garden to plant anything. But I enjoy various types of pickles. There are many preserved vegetables selling in the market, some from Japan, China, Taiwan and Korea. The korean kim chi are hot and nice. I wonder if you can pickle all the produces so that you keep them for a long, long time. Since pickling process does not include boiling, the value of the vegetables is not lost to the boiling water.

I live alone, too, but I can produce from my garden. Home canned food is just as safe as commercially canned and a lot healthier. You can can tomatoes and tomato sauce in a boiling water bath (if you grow hybrid "sweet" tomatoes, you'll need to add vinegar to acidify them). You can also make pickles of various kinds that way. I bought a pressure canner because I felt that it would save money over the long run. You said, "Then there is freezing but what if the freezer fails?" What if it doesn't? Then you'd have a lot of good food. Dehydration is a good way to save food. Canning creates more nutrient loss than dehydrating.

The only things I grow that are edible are very easy to deal with - strawberries, raspberries & chives! The strawberries never amount to much so they just get eaten as they come. Last year the raspberries kinda took over the world, we had tons, so we had raspberries for a snack almost everyday and I would occasionally freeze them. And chives can be dried and stored forever (they aren't as yummy though).

I normally put my stuff in freezer bags and freeze them. And I can some of my stuff to. My grandmother canned all her life because she had a big garden. and she also sold stuff and gave stuff away. But I have all her canning stuff now so that is what I will use this year for canning my garden stuff.

I usually use the excess pieces of produce (like when I make a salad, or stirfry and there are pieces left over) in a soup. I keep a ziplock back in my freezer filled with all these pieces from the week and I will boil them for a few hours to make a broth, along with other things. If you grow any sort of herbs, I would definitely recommend drying them. I have a few that are almost ready to start using, so I need to learn how to dry them. You could also not buy a lot of things during the summer, maybe just rices and pastas, so that you use up a lot of your produce while it's fresh. You could also consider cutting or blending the vegetables into a paste and adding it to ground meat for a more healthy burger, using less meat and more of your produce.

We do not have any, but when we did, we froze everything. We did not know anything about dehydrating properly, but when we lived in Saskatoon, the climate was so dry that we were able to dry herbs, but I never tried it with fruits and vegetables. I did can fruit and pickles but not vegetables or meat. Too dangerous.

We always used the water method. It involves a stock pot or two, a wooden rack to go at the bottom for the canning jars to sit on, and bringing it to boiling. It's really simple too. ...never cost that much, either, but then my Mom inherited canning jars from her Mom and we got her a stock pot for christmas. Never buy when you can get for free! You can often get stuff offa freecycle, that you need. Dehydration is the best option, and there are tricks to keeping nutrients. Most of the time, you want to dry it slowly. With the oven set to a low but warm temperature over hours, if not days. Herbs and greens can be air-dried with no loss of nutrients. Making various kinds of leathers/jerkies also saves alot of nutrients too, because you more or less infuse the juices' good stuffs as it dries and becomes a bit tougher (you more or less use the same process that goes into jerky on fruit, veggies, etc. and can always use it in stuffs later, by re-pureeing it and putting it in stuffs like soups and stews). There's tons of options. Me? I prefer a bit of each. Some canned, some dried, some frozen. With the rest eaten, sold, or given away. ^_^ The local farmer's market/flea market'll welcome you, but I'd only recommend it if you had enough to fill up a table or two with produce.

That hasn't been a problem for me. I always use all the stuff that my garden produces. If I had extra I would either sell it or give it away. Like I said so far it hasn't been a problem. It is something that I would like to do if I could ever manage to make enough to sell.

I freeze what I know can freeze. Otherwise I just eat up as much of that as it becomes ripe in my garden or I share with family & neighbors. I have similar concerns about canning and such as well. I know there are things like freezer jams you can make that I don't think require you to "seal" the jar that my MIL has done. My MIL does the canning and she's been ill for 6mo or so w/ cancer so I dont' know that she'll get to any canning. But I think either the freezing or the boiling method would be the best route. Could you ask on say your local freecycle or craigs list for some of the supplies? I know I'm leary of making the investment myself plus my hubby says the way MIL does it could be dangerous & I'm not about putting myself or my kids in danger if I do it wrong ya know? I'd say maybe also check out YouTube or E-How and maybe there's some turtorial now that I"m typing bout this to you that we can check out to ease our nerves.

well now, I am happy to hear you are going to have an abundance of produce..awesome! I have used a lot of methods myself, canning, freezing, dehydrating. I do not think I could really recommend one over the other.

You don´t tell us what kind of extra produce you will have. Canning is a difficult procedure and you have to know how to do it as it´s not safe with some veggies. But freezing is fine with most of them. And you can make tomato sauces and jams (they are delicious). But another way of deling with it is by trading. Probably you have friends who will be very happy to trade good homegrown veggies for other food. Then you can get rid of your surplus and acquire enough sugar or rice to go around the year. I hope this helps. Take care

Anything we store for ourselves is not considered excess. Some of our excess produce is given to the neighbors and friends at church. Neighbor helps me out with things often and same with the people at church. Some people at church need the help and we are more than glad to give it even when they have nothing to give back. Most of the rest we will try to sell on the side of the road.l Anything that goes bad gets fed to our chickens and ducks.