Using Excess Garden Produce from Your Summer Garden

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Sometimes the garden can put out more food than you know what to do with. Find ways for using your excess garden produce from your summer garden here.

Knowing what to do with the excess produce from the garden is a great skill to have. There are so many things you can do with the extra produce such as canning, dehydrating, freezing, and so much more. And finding new recipes to use for your harvest surplus is great too.

And for a complete guide on how to use even more produce, check out How to Use All the Garden Produce You Grow-Without Canning by clicking this link.

Garden produce

Learning to grow great amounts of fruits and vegetables is a wonderful self-sufficiency skill. You can feed yourself and those around you in any circumstances if you can learn to grow food. But some plants and under some conditions can put out so much produce you don’t know what you’ll ever do with so much excess garden produce.

What plants can grow a glut of food that is hard to use up? Tomatoes, especially determinate varieties that put off all of their harvest around the same time can overwhelm with a big excess tomato crop. Okra produces like mad in the hot months of the summer. This can give you a ton of excess okra to figure out what to do with. Bean plants can produce an overwhelming amount of excess green beans all at once. And in the spring and fall, your excess snow peas can come on all at once, so how to you use as much of them as possible?

Fruit trees usually ripen all of their harvest in a short amount of time as well. This can give you excess apples or excess peaches or other excess garden produce fruits to preserve for later. Bushes and plants like strawberries and blueberries can as well.

Hot peppers can sometimes produce an infinite amount of product, but they are one of those things that are super tough to use up in bulk. You can’t just eat a plate of excess hot peppers to use them up. Or at least I can’t. I love to dry and freeze them to use in small amounts. And here are some ideas for excess New Mexican chilies too. Herbs can be overwhelming in the summer as well. I love having fresh herbs year-round, but how can I make sure I always have that fresh taste? And my favorite of all is excess garlic from the garden. What a blessing to have that! But don’t forget excess onions. Every dish starts with an onion, so extra onions are a blessing too.

What about excess cucumbers? Is there really a way to save them for later that is actually good? Another great garden harvest producer is sweet potatoes. Many people don’t know what to do with a bunch of excess sweet potatoes. They store well for several months, but if you have enough to eat year-round, how can you keep them delicious?

We all know that time of year when it’s lock your cars at church or you’ll get zucchini. Find out how to use excess squash from the garden in more ways than you have imagined.

Garden fresh vegetables

Eating food fresh from the garden is my favorite way to enjoy it, but we can’t always consume everything while it’s fresh, so we need to learn the best ways to store it that makes it last the longest. There’s nothing I hate worse than wasting food.

Greens are something I like in small quantities, so I love to preserve them for later use. But how do you store a bunch of excess greens so they are easiest to use throughout the winter or non-gardening season? I love to make green powder to hide in my daycare kid’s food. Sprinkle it on and it looks like herbs they are used to and you can’t taste it. This is a great way to add nutrients to your family’s food without them having to eat things they really don’t like. There are so many other ways you can preserve greens so check them on by clicking on the highlighted link above. And here are some great ideas specifically for excess swiss chard. Check it out.

Vegetable storage is an important skill to learn. This will help you have better quality produce to enjoy for longer. For instance, tomatoes should NEVER be refrigerated. It ruins the texture and gives them a sour flavor. Garlic and onions don’t belong in the fridge either or sweet potatoes.

Carrots, onions, and potatoes last longest if they are stored not touching is a cool but not cold environment. Root cellars are perfect for them.

You can also use your excess weeds to make healthy food such as dandelion jelly. Or use them to make dandelion syrup too.

Find out more about how to store fruits and vegetables to get the most life out of them here.

For more information on how to preserve food, check out these articles.

• Beginning guide to canning,
• how to freeze fruits and vegetables
• How to preserve food with dehydration

I hope these articles will help you get the very most out of your garden produce this year and for years to come.

Click here for tips on how to start a survival garden.