growing food Archives - Page 2 of 4 - Grow Your Own Vegetables

The Hidden Gems of Garden Journaling

The garden journal is one of the least used tools of gardening. Those who keep a garden journal, often do so because they simply love journaling. Those who don’t journal often find the idea daunting or a frivolous waste of time. But under the surface of this seemingly extra-curricular activity exists a giant underground cavern of insightful gems waiting to be discovered.

Like other historical records, a garden is a place where we can look back to examine the why’s of the present moment–and make better choices for the future.

Why am I having a challenge with this one area of my garden? What’s wrong with my plants? Is it the soil?

If you’re not journaling about your garden and keeping a history, your garden experience will likely be filled with moments when you can’t remember events that happened. Without that history, learning what to do and what not to do becomes more difficult and time consuming than if you had just taken a few minutes to make a few notes.

Sometimes, the insights a garden journal can bring are so profound that it changes your entire journey and launches you the equivalent distance from here to the moon.

I remember waking up one day during my second year of market gardening. I was getting success, but not quite like I wanted. And while I was feeling successful, I was getting burnt out. As the season continued, that exhaustion got worse. I had trouble reaching goals and staying on track. Then abundance season hit and with it, all the pests and disease. I woke up one morning and realized I was so exhausted that I was no longer happy. I felt like I was trying to force nature to cooperate. So I walked. I left the food in the garden and just walked away.

I didn’t return to gardening for an entire year. But when I did, I looked back and realized that so many of my days were filled with journal entries of frustration. How I felt that year was exactly what was happening: I was trying to force nature to cooperate and fit in my box.

That’s when everything changed.

I began to ask questions about how I could partner with nature so that I was letting her do as much of the work for me as possible. I realized that the language I was using for my entries was all about how ‘I was growing a garden.’ So I changed my perspective and started writing, ‘Nature is growing this garden, and the soil is growing my plants.’

And she did. Nature grew my plants. And because I wasn’t trying to grow plants, I could focus on growing the soil and being a steward of the land.

Were it not for my garden entries, I would not have had anything to reflect on to make the connection of how my approach to gardening was creating the very frustration I was working so hard to avoid. Writing down my new mindset to partner with nature and filter my garden choices through that lens helped me set goals properly.

Because of that one insight, gardening became more effortless than ever. Staying on track with my goals became so much easier. Had I not seen those entries of frustration later after I had long ago walked away from my garden, I may not have seen the pattern I was creating. When you journal, positive change is possible and can catapult your journey forward.

A garden journal isn’t just a place for you to look back and gain knowledge and wisdom. It’s a place where others can too. Whether you share lessons you’ve gained from your journaling with other growers in your community or you gift the journals to your grandchildren to pass on your garden insights, mindsets, and recipes, the record of your garden journey is absolutely priceless.

My grandmother didn’t garden, but she did make the most delicious chicken noodle soup! The are many moments in my life that I have wished for that recipe and a photo of her and I enjoying that amazing meal together. But there’s no recipe. There are no photos. And so there is a gap where her smile and her creation should be.

By keeping a journal of your garden harvests and recipes, you are recording the creation of your life. Someday they may become precious to your children and grandchildren.

When you choose to keep a garden journal, so many gems can be found that may otherwise have remained hidden and lost to time. Keeping a garden journal is a way to light your path and the path of those who will follow in our footsteps.

Crystal Meserole
GYOV Instructor and Harvest Club Support

Crystal owns and operates a one-woman wholesale commercial living microgreen operation in the mountains of western North Carolina. After working and managing local restaurants for over a decade, she saw the need for chefs to have access to more affordable, organic food for the delicious creations they craft for our communities.

Crystal hopes to stand as a clear message to anyone who thinks they can’t grow: You can. Anyone can. With the right system, mindsets, and mentor, everything becomes possible.

If you are interested in learning more about how mindsets & journaling techniques can help you grow a thriving and enjoyable garden check out our new micro-course led by Crystal.

Click here for details

Masterclass on YouTube:

Spirit Gardening

Do you journal about your garden? Share an insight below that you have gained through your journaling!

6 Benefits to Saving Your Own Seeds

“Don’t put that in your mouth, you don’t know where it’s been!” said every parent, ever.

Plants today are fumigated, grown in overly fertilized soils, and go through all sorts of processes we unknowingly agree to when we put that food in our mouth.

When you save your own seed, you know exactly how that seed was grown. So there’s no mystery as to what you’re putting in your mouth. You do know where it’s been!

Seed adapts more and more to your local growing conditions through their generations. Over time, future generations of those plants will be more tolerant of your temperatures, precipitation levels, and other local conditions. If Stephen Hawking is right and “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change,” it would seem that seeds may just have a higher collective IQ than us humans. Because as they say, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!”.

There is a direct link between the flavor of food and the nutrition it contains. Constantly consuming the same humdrum varieties of mass-produced, uniform, flavorless food can have a big impact on your long term health. Boring food may not kill you, but the absence of proper nutrition will definitely not make you stronger!

And supposedly only the strongest make it, survival of the fittest and all.

By saving seed, you are ensuring the survival of humans and tens of thousands of seed varieties. There are ‘aspects of life that are valuable to our survival and aspects that make survival valuable.’ Seed saving is both. Big agriculture disregards variety because it doesn’t fit into a cookie cutter box of traits that make their job easier.

Seed saving gives you access to literally thousands of new food varieties, all with their own unique colors, textures, and flavors. Since you are what you eat, I have to ask: Are you eating the same cookie cutter, uniform foods over and over again? If so, it’s not a good look. When you save your own seeds, you’re creating abundance you literally cannot buy with money.

But the abundance can buy money. Because in fact people, money actually does grow on trees… and annuals, perennial shrubs, and biennials. Ask any gardener or farmer that has ever lived. And the abundance of variety means unique offerings to share with neighbors (and market if you’re a small-scale grower).

A seed saved is potentially hundreds of thousands of seeds earned.A single amaranth seed grows into a plant that can produce up to 250,000 seeds. Now that’s what I call an investment!

While there are a ton of benefits to seed saving, it isn’t all rainbows and butterflies. Sometimes, you save seed, and you don’t get what you expect, or none of the seed you save germinates. It happens. But you know what they say: It’s better to have seed saved and lost than to have never seed saved at all!

Crystal Meserole
GYOV Instructor and Harvest Club Support

Crystal hopes to stand as a clear message to anyone who thinks they can’t grow: You can. Anyone can. With the right system, mindsets, and mentor, everything becomes possible.

Have a seed saving benefit or perspective you want to share? Post it in the comments below… bonus points if it comes along with a quote or play on words! 🙂

3 Mistakes Beginners Make Saving Seeds (And What to Do Instead)

Saving seeds is rewarding on so many levels. It’s not just about the end result of getting viable seed. It’s not even just the harvest you get from that seed next season. In fact, it’s not about any one thing.

Saving your own seeds is about the entire journey–from the moment you hold that tiny fleck of life on the tip of your finger, all the way through that plant’s life, to that special moment when you are holding the next generation of seeds in your palm. This experience gives seed savers a special relationship to plants and the food they provide us.

But when you’re first starting out on your seed saving journey, it doesn’t often feel this magical. If you’re making these three mistakes, you’ll end up disappointed, like someone just took your birthday cake:

Saving Seeds Mistake #1: Trying to Save & Breed Hybrid Seeds

Hybrid seeds are the result of two open pollinated varieties of the same species mixing. When this happens, the seed is either as sterile as a mule or a weird mutant plant that makes you feel like your life took a turn into a sci-fi alien movie.

Seed savers avoid hybrids because they do not produce relatively stable outcomes (a true-to-type variety). Now, a hybrid can be stabilized over time and become a true-to-type variety, but this process takes many years of growing, selecting, and saving seed. And there’s no guarantee that you’re going to get what you’re aiming for.

Saving Seeds Mistake #2: Planting Different Varieties From the Same Species Too Close Together

Plants grown from open pollinated seed can still cross-pollinate with other varieties. When this happens, you’ll get the same weird and unpredictable results as you will when you try to save the seed of hybrids that happen to be fertile: you never know what you’re going to get. Basically, these are naturally bred hybrid seeds.

To save seed and get the same variety next year with relatively stable traits, you want to plant only one variety of each species within the space that variety pollinates. This is called the “isolation distance,” and all crops are different.

For example, lettuce only pollinates at a distance of around 20 feet. This makes it easier for most home growers with medium-sized gardens to save seeds.

However, the species Brassica oleracea (Brussels sprouts, cabbage, broccoli, kale, etc.) is another story. Members of this species can cross pollinate if they’re within half a mile of each other. So you only want to grow one of these if you’re planning to save the seeds. You’ll also want to find out if anyone else within a half mile radius is growing anything from this species!

But if you’re a home gardener and still want a variety of food and to save your seed, there are other options besides buying a piece of land miles wide. Connect with your community of seed savers and growers and exchange food and seed. You grow the brussels sprouts, and let your friends grow the others. This way, you can maximize your garden space, get a variety of food in your diet, and still save your seed.

Saving Seeds Mistake #3: Not Planting Enough of the Same Variety

If you don’t plant enough plants of a variety when you’re saving seeds, the result is gene bottlenecking and a deterioration in the genetic stability of the traits of that variety. The most common way to recognize this phenomenon is if you notice that your next generation of seeds just aren’t producing as vigorously as previous generations.

To preserve genetic diversity in that variety, you have to do one of two things:

1. Grow enough plants to preserve genetic diversity long term.

How many plants is enough? Well, that depends on the variety.

For some varieties, it’s only a few plants. Beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) only require 20 plants minimum for long term genetic preservation. And they get planted between 2-6” apart depending on the variety.   

But for corn, you need more than 200 plants! Each corn plant needs a lot of space to grow, so unless you’re a farmer, it’s a little unrealistic.

If saving a seed is out of reach for you because that crop needs too many plants per season to preserve the genetics, then go for option number two below. 

2. Reintroduce new genetic material every so often.

If you’re growing Glass Gem heirloom corn and you can’t plant 200 plants, plant what you can, and save those seeds. Then every so often, buy a packet of Glass Gem heirloom corn from Rareseeds.com, or get some from the local free seed exchange, and plant them in with the saved seed you have. This can help preserve the genetics of that variety.

When you’re first starting out on your seed saving journey, it’s best to start out with self-pollinating plants. These plants generally don’t need a ton of plants to preserve long term diversity, and they usually have shorter pollination distances (like the lettuce in Mistake #2).

When it comes to saving seed, you’re going to have much more success if you plant enough plants, follow proper pollination distances, avoid mules and aliens, and stick to those open pollinated seed varieties.

Crystal Meserole
GYOV Instructor and Harvest Club Support

Crystal hopes to stand as a clear message to anyone who thinks they can’t grow: You can. Anyone can. With the right system, mindsets, and mentor, everything becomes possible.

Have seed saving tips? Share them in the comment section below!

Your 7 Step Food Preservation System

Turn your garden harvests into meals!

GYOV founder Stacey Murphy developed our Harvest-into-Meals food preservation system that gives you strategies for eating fresh year-round, whether it’s out of your garden or from the farmer’s market.

Having a food preservation system helps you:

• Manage the harvest you have coming in without overwhelm or waste
• Enjoy garden-fresh nutrition year round
• Take the guesswork out of meal planning
• Plan to preserve your favorite staple foods
• Open up time and energy to enjoy other activities

Like any new skill, learning to manage harvest takes time and energy upfront. But as you incorporate a food preservation system into your routine, it becomes second nature with time.

>>> Want to learn about your food preservation options? Check out our “5 Methods to Preserve Vegetables at Home” blog post.

Step 1: Set food preservation goals

The first step in creating a food preservation system that works for you is setting goals. Goals that work for you and your lifestyle are all about…YOU! So put away those “shoulds” and focus on what you actually want.

The best kind of goals create habits, especially if it’s a daily habit or a weekly habit. Habits make accomplishing your goals automatic, just like brushing your teeth.

Be realistic about your time and energy

Whatever kind of garden space, time, and energy levels you’re working with, be realistic about what kind of food preservation system will work for your lifestyle. If you have a busy life with lots of priorities, your plan should be enjoyable and easy to execute in the time you have. If your time is flexible and you’re looking to take on a new project, be realistic about how much you can take on at once without burning out.

Set a variety of goals

• Set some small goals that you know you can accomplish (ex: I want to learn how to lacto-ferment vegetables). Easy wins create momentum!
• Set some stretch goals so that if you manage the small goals, you have something to stretch for (ex: I want to lacto-ferment 20 quarts of sauerkraut from my own cabbage).
• Differentiate between rate-based goals (ex: I want to can two quarts of tomatoes per week) and overall goals (ex: I want to can all of the pasta sauce I need for a year).

Set Questions for reflection

How many hours per week can you commit to preparing and preserving food?

• Do you have friends or family who can help with prep work?
• What materials or supplies do you need to get started?
• What kind of preserved food excites you?
• In your garden, do you want to grow food specifically for preservation? Or do you want to grow easy foods you enjoy and figure out how to preserve them later?

Step 2: Quantify your goals

After you’ve set realistic goals for your food preservation system that align with your values and lifestyle, it’s time to do the math. If you plan to grow vegetables in your garden specifically for preservation, this step is crucial for your crop plan.

For example, if your overall goal is to grow and preserve all of your own tomatoes for pasta sauce for a year, you need to figure out:

• How much pasta sauce you eat in a year (in quart jars)
• How many tomatoes it will take to make that much pasta sauce
• How many tomato plants you need to grow that many tomatoes (tip: overestimate here to account for loss)

It’s okay to estimate in the beginning! You’ll use what you learn this year to create a more specific plan next year.

Step 3: Track your garden harvests

The third step of your Harvest-into-Meals food preservation system is to create or adjust your crop plan for the next growing season so that you’re growing for preservation. To do that effectively, you’ll need to create a harvest log.

Keep a harvest log

A harvest log is a list of crops you’re growng. Every time you harvest, you note the amount of each crop by weight or by bunch. This empirical data comes straight from your garden and gives you a clear picture of how much harvest you can expect from your plants and your space. Start simple with one or two of your staple crops.

Harvest once a week & batch tasks

Make it a weekly event: harvest your produce, log your harvest, and plan what to do with it. You can see everything that’s available for the week (see Step 4) and create your meal plan (see Step 5) in just a couple of hours.

A note for the farmer’s market

Even if you don’t have your own garden, you can note when different crops become available at the farmer’s market. And look for sales. For example, at the end of a tomato season, farmers may have discounted boxes of tomatoes perfect for preservation.

Step 4: Divide up your harvest

You want to use or preserve all of your harvest each week. Naturally, some may end up in the compost bin, but dividing up your harvest will help you reduce waste.

What you preserve:

First, separate out all of the best-looking produce. That’s what you’re going to preserve! When you preserve food, it has to be blemish-free. Blemishes increase nutrient loss and can introduce bad bacteria.

What you eat:

Those tomatoes with blemishes? Those are what you’re going to cook or eat raw this week! Just cut away bad sections and incorporate the good bits into your meal plan for the week.

What you compost:

If anything is blemished and damaged beyond edibility, or if it has mold growing on it, that goes into the compost. When you compost, yucky vegetables go back into your garden as nutrients.

Don’t have a compost bin yet? Toss food scraps outside instead of putting them in the trash. Food scraps don’t biodegrade in landfills–but they do contribute to methane emissions and climate change.

Using scraps:

You might want to keep certain food scraps and do something with them. You can make apple cider vinegar out of apple cores and peels. As long as they look good and aren’t moldy, you can also cook vegetable scraps into stock for soups.

Step 5: Plan meals for the week

Could you commit two hours to meal prep each week? This little bit of structure could lead to lots of creativity. Plus, strategically planning your meals ahead saves you time and energy in the long run.

If you can successfully plan one week of meals at a time, you can conquer the whole year.
-Stacey Murphy

Questions for reflection:

• What does a well rounded meal look like for you?
• What do you eat when you are in a hurry?
• How many meals are you eating on the run?
• How can your loved ones help?

Step 6: Preserve according to your goals

Step six is the preservation step, so you’re going to spend some time here. This is where you take all the planning that you’ve done and you actually do each process.

>>> Need some ideas? Check out…

Step 7: Create a preservation log

Then the seventh step in your preservation system is to create a preservation log. A good preservation log is going to tell you:

• What you preserved and when
• How much you have on hand vs what you already ate
• Progress on your rate-based goals

The most important goal of your preservation system is to make everything visible. Things disappear quickly in the back of your refrigerator or shelves, and you forget about them.

Ideas for keeping your preserved items visible

• Keep a dry erase board on your fridge for reminders
• We read left to right, so orient your “eat by” food dates left to right
• Add drawers and label lids
• Tiered shelving

Your log might be your pantry itself, where you just have everything labeled very clearly. Or you might want to create a paper log or a digital log. However you track so that you can follow along. You can improve your system for next year so that you can reset your goals.

Let’s do this!

Learning to preserve your own food can be a big project or just a few simple steps–it all depends on your lifestyle! Either way, having a food preservation system in place will simplify your process and turn new skills into lifelong habits.

Masterclass on YouTube:

10 Tips to Growing Tomatoes… and More of Them!

Share your biggest take-a-ways from your preservation log!

5 Methods to Preserve Vegetables at Home

It’s easier than you think to preserve vegetables at home.

When it comes to preserving food, many of us think of Granny canning tomatoes late into the night. But there are lots of other options! Whatever kind of experience, space, and tools you have, you can preserve your garden harvests, as well as fruits and vegetables you pick up at your local farmer’s market or grocery store.

Harvesting & Storing for Preservation

To make sure your preserved vegetables are safe, delicious, and packed with nutrients, it starts with how you harvest and store them.

Use the freshest produce possible. Vegetable texture and nutrition begin to degrade within just a few hours of harvest, so going directly from harvest into canning is best. Using the farmer’s market? Make a plan to preserve your haul the day you shop.

Use fruits and vegetables that do not have blemishes. Use those fresh in salads or cook them up that week.

Some vegetables like garlic, onions, winter squash, and sweet potatoes need to be cured before storage. But if you harvest and cure them correctly, many can store for months on end. These cold weather staples become hearty winter soup for a reason. If your goal is to grow food for yourself for the entire year, consider adding some of these to your crop plan.

Dehydrating

Properly dehydrated food is the closest thing to raw in terms of nutrients.

Dehydrating preserves vegetable enzymes. Enzymes are most susceptible to damage when food is wet, and they can withstand drying temperatures up to 140ºF (60ºC). Once most of the moisture is removed, enzymes become stable and dormant until re-hydrated in your gut or in a recipe.

To dehydrate your veggies, you can use your oven, purchase a food dehydrator appliance, or build your own solar dehydrator (like Tom Bartels uses to preserve his abundance of kale!). There are lots of options based on your budget, space, and DIY skills, so a bit of research will help you find or create a food dehydrating system that fits your needs.

Tips to preserve vegetables at home by dehydrating:

• Air circulation is key! Moving air prohibits microbial growth. Spread your food in a single layer with a little room to “breathe,” and keep that breeze blowing throughout the dehydration process.
• Keep it even: Consistently slice your veggies so they dry at the same rate. Remember that edges always dry faster than the center, and note that the back of your dehydrator may become warmer faster. For an even batch, keep an eye on your veggies and rotate them.
• Get that moisture out! Sometimes, it’s hard to tell if something is completely dehydrated. When in doubt, put it in an airtight container overnight. If there is fog in the container or the food is softer the next day, either there was humidity in the container to begin with or the food was not totally dehydrated.

Freezing Vegetables

Almost everything that comes out of your garden can be frozen! Freezing is a quick and accessible way to preserve vegetables at home, even in small amounts.

There are only five vegetables that don’t like to be frozen: Radish, cucumber, lettuce, cabbage, and celery. They lose their flavor and texture. For every other vegetable, there’s a way to make sure that you retain everything that makes it delicious.

You can chop and directly freeze peppers, onions, and mushrooms.

Other vegetables require blanching before you freeze them. “Blanching” is just a fancy name for heating your veggies in boiling water for a certain amount of time, then quenching those vegetables in an ice bath for the same amount of time. Blanching times are different for different crops, so look it up before you get started.

Benefits of freezing your veggies:

• Freezing takes less time than drying, canning, and fermenting.
• You can preserve the texture of that vegetable, as well as the flavor and nutrient profile.
• Chopping and freezing a whole bunch of your harvest all at once can reduce prep for future meals.
• You control the size you cut your veggies and the size of the portion. Create little serving size packets in your freezer so that you just pull out what you need for each meal.
• Did you know you can freeze tomatoes, and they store for at least 3-4 months? Freezing is a fast method to preserve all those tomatoes.
• Freezing involves simple procedures that you can do with household items.

Why you may not want to freeze your harvest:

• You have to have freezer space and the power to keep the freezer cold. If you have a big family, you might not have enough freezer space to store all that garden harvest.
• If you freeze your vegetables incorrectly, you can actually speed up the loss of texture, flavor, and nutrients and make your food really unappetizing.

Lacto-Fermentation

Lacto-fermentation happens when friendly bacteria, called lactobacili, convert the natural sugars in your vegetables and fruits into lactic acid. The proliferation of lactobacilli in your fermented vegetables enhances their digestibility and the bioavailability of their nutrients.

Which vegetables can you lacto-ferment? Basically all of them. It’s just a matter of taste. The flavor of leafy greens, for example, can become very strong in the fermentation process. “Tougher” vegetables also hold up better through fermentation and storage. The more fibrous the cell wall, the longer they’re going to last.

You can get started with lacto-fermentation using items you most likely already have in your kitchen, like glass jars. There is special equipment you can purchase that can make your life a little easier, like fermentation crocks, seals for jars, and weights specifically designed for fermentation.

Benefits of lacto-fermentation:

• The biggest benefit of lacto-fermentation is for your health. Lacto-fermented foods are not only preserved–-they are nutrient dense, enzyme rich, and chock-full of probiotics.
• Store-bought fermented foods are expensive, so you’re going to save a lot of money fermenting your own.
• Lacto-fermentation is a simple and fast way to process lots of your harvest. A quick wash and chop will get your ferment started, and then it’s just a waiting game.
• Fermentation is a fun science experiment and learning experience for all ages!

Disadvantages of lacto-fermentation:

• Lacto-fermentation is vulnerable to contamination, so it definitely requires monitoring.
• Full fermentation can take up to eight weeks.
• Some people find a disadvantage in that lacto-fermentation requires salt.

Water Bath Canning:

Water bath canning is for highly acidic foods that have a pH of 4.6 or lower. Many unwanted bacteria, including botulism, cannot survive at such a low pH. That list of high-acid foods includes fruits, pickles, sauerkraut, jams, salsas, and hot sauces. Tomatoes are close enough, too, as long as you add a little extra acidity.

There are two types of water bath canning:

1. Raw packing. Take your raw fruits or vegetables, put them in the jars, and then pour some sort of brine or sugar fluid over the top. The advantage to raw packing is that it’s easy and saves time. The disadvantage is that not as much gets preserved per jar, so you can eat up shelf space quickly. There will be a lot of extra space in each jar, so you’ll need to use a lot of fluid.

2. Hot packing. With hot packing, you pre-cook a recipe and put that into the jars. This process reduces the air inside of the jar and it improves the quality of the product. It does take a little extra time to pre-cook the recipe, but hot packing maximizes jar space.

There are three ways to kill off unwanted bacteria in the canning process: heat, sugar, natural acids, or a combination of them. Following your canning recipe closely ensures the food you’re preserving is safe.

One disadvantage of water bath canning is that it is fairly time consuming to heat up a lot of water and do all the cleaning necessary for the process. If possible, make a day of it, and can a lot of things all at once.

Pressure Canning:

For fruits and vegetables that have a pH greater than 4.6, pressure canning utilizes pressurized steam to heat water above its boiling point (212 °F). Low acid foods must be canned at 240 °F or higher and held there for the time specified in the recipe in order to destroy unwanted bacteria.

Pressurized steam creates superheated temperatures, hotter than boiling water. The rest is the same as water bath canning. As the jars cool down, a vacuum is formed, and it seals the food into the jars and prevents any new microorganisms from entering, which could spoil the food.

There are two types of pressure canners: weighted gauge and dial gauge. If you’re purchasing a new pressure canner, make sure to do your research and find one that fits your needs. Understanding how to use and maintain your pressure canner is crucial for safe canning.

Pressure canning safety:

• Wash, rinse, and dry canner to remove all the foreign matter after each use.
• Prevent odors from forming in the canner by thoroughly airing it.
• Store the can in a dry place to prevent rust.
• Do not use your pressure cooker to pressure can. A pressure canner is considered a pressure canner if it holds a minimum of four quart jars. Most pressure cookers cannot. The recipes that are in the USDA guidelines for canning are based on empirical data from things that have been tested. And what’s been tested are pressure canners that hold at least a minimum of four quart jars.
• Don’t add grains, bread, noodles, eggs, thickeners, package mixes, avocado, or coconut milk.

Some fruits and vegetables don’t can well. Eggplant, celery, brussel sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, artichokes, and zucchini get really mushy, and you’re not going to enjoy the results of pressure canning those vegetables.