In
order to provide the food that we need throughout the year, a lot of planning
and follow-through is necessary. It is
important to grow the foods that our family likes otherwise a lot of time and
effort is wasted on food that eventually goes to the animals. At first we started small, and grew a variety
of things without knowing how much we should grow. Over time, we have discovered the amounts of
vegetables that we should grow in order to produce enough which will fill our
needs for a year. Naturally, those that
we use a lot of, such as tomatoes, are grown in larger amounts so that we can
preserve all that we need for the year.
We preserve a lot of tomato sauce for spaghetti, stewed tomatoes, and
salsa. We have discovered that we should grow 12 Roma variety tomato plants, in
order to get enough to preserve for the year.
Some we plant in the garden and some we plant in our two bigger
greenhouses. By planting in the
greenhouse this way, we can hedge against a sudden freeze. If there is an unusual and unpredicted
mid-summer freeze, we may lose the tomatoes outside, but the plants in the
greenhouses will survive. We also use a
lot of green beans, so we grow a large amount of these. We preserve many canned pints of green beans
to last the year, and freeze some to use in stir fry recipes. And, we also use them fresh throughout the
summer.
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| Greenhouse #2 Outside |
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| Greenhouse #3 Outside |
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Greenhouse #2 Inside
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| Greenhouse #3 Inside |
We
have found out the amounts of each food that we need for the year, through
trial and error. The vegetables that we
produce will be eaten fresh, and then the extra will be preserved by canning or
through freezing. So, eventually it will
all be used. It was very satisfying when
we were able to get to the point of producing all of a certain variety of
vegetable that we would need for the year.
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