When 2020 hit, I realized that I was not ready for any crises, especially the food crisis. When the limits on the food and how much of what you can buy I realized how fragile we are and how much we all need each other, especially how precious farmers and those who grow food are. I found myself totally incompetent and started to seek wisdom on how to grow my own food to eat, store and preserve.
To start a pantry stocking garden, make a list of vegetables and fruit your family likes to eat, the produce that is easy to grow and store. These fruits and vegetables are your pantry staples and should be gown in a pantry stocking garden. If needed take advantage of local farmer markets and gardeners to stock your pantry while your garden still grows and matures along with you as a gardener.
What veggies to grow, eat and stock your pantry with
Grow vegetables and fruit to your family likes to eat. It’s the easiest thing to find out what your favorite veggies are. Just check what you mostly come home with from a grocery store, what are you buying and paying for the most? Do you find yourself buying carrots or greens for salad the most? Then they should be on your list. Another way to find out what your family consumes most is by deconstructing your meals. Go through the last night’s dinner and take it apart, what veggies were in it that you could grow? By going through your grocery list and meals you will get a list of veggies and fruit your family enjoys, those are the things you should grow
What vegetables are easy to store?
Canning is a fantastic way to preserve food, but to me, it’s a tremendous workload. I prefer growing veggies and fruit that don’t require anything just sit them on the shelf and done. Next are the ones that can be easily frozen or dehydrated. I prefer to buy canned food rather than can them myself.
Here is the list of vegetables easy to store just on the shelf in crates, or cardboard boxes. I like to grow butternut squash, spaghetti squash, potatoes, onion, garlic, beets, beans, and apples. I store them in our basement in crates, paper bags, or just in cardboard boxes uncovered. Last year my butternut squash lasts me a full year till we finally ate it. They require minimum hustle for storage.
Vegetables easy to freeze are parsnip, carrots, berries, cauliflower, zucchini, broccoli, celery stalk, and celery root. They freeze and cook beautifully after freezing. Some freeze tomatoes as well, and this might be something for me to look into just so I could avoid canning.
I stock my pantry with canned goods by simply buying bulk at the store. I canned some fruits and veggies in the past but found out it is not that much worth it for me. I feel overwhelmed by canning and really don’t have a passion to do it. If I should can anything it would only be something that we use the most like tomato sauce because we buy a lot of it.
One valuable piece of advice if you are a novice at gardening and preserving foods would be to choose vegetables that you are able to store, and choose according to your storing abilities. If you don’t know how to can foods, and you most probably won’t be learning to can when your harvest is ready, then choose a vegetable that is easy to store another way, like on shelves or freeze if you have freezer space.
For those who already know there will be no freezer space available in their house, then choose vegetables you are able to store outside freezing them. If you know that you can afford another freezer just for your harvest when the time is right, then go ahead and grow what you could freeze when the time is right.
Simply, consider how you will store your harvest according to your abilities, space, and appliances available.
How to manage your garden harvest
I like to pick vegetables that do not ripen all at the same time. I like to spread their harvest across the whole growing season. I know that I can manage to store one produce a week and that’s it. So I make sure that I have only one produce ripening at a time.
Pick varieties that are ripe at different times so you have enough time and space to manage to preserve them. If most of your garden ripens and is ready to be harvested all at the same time you might find out that you don’t have enough time, strength, or space and it might overwhelm you. When choosing seeds for your garden, plan when you approximately should harvest them and choose accordingly. Make sure that when your tomatoes are ready to harvest your other cop is already stored or is still ripening.
The first crop I store is the cool crop vegetables. Those grow in my zone 6, beginning of spring and the end of spring to the beginning of summer. My aim is to store my cool liking crop while the warm season crops are just seedlings. So can manage to freeze, dry, and if you like, can my cool crop. I have time for them because my warm crop is still in diapers. I have space because it’s the first harvest of the season. I grow as much cool crops as I can. Eventually, in the fall I will grow all the cool crops again but if something goes wrong, I know I have already stored a chunk of it.
Then when the time comes for the warm liking vegetables to be harvested I am ready.
I dry herbs on monthly bases so when the larger harvest of veggies needs attention I don’t have to deal with herbs. I like things done in the simplest way possible. The way I dry herbs only takes three steps: cut them, wash them, and hang them in the shed. Done. Once dried I store them in jars. It’s quick and easy and no fuzz to grow, harvest and store them.
How to keep food preservation quick and easy
Growing up in Europe, we never took the skin of peaches off when canning them. I was very surprised, here in the USA majority of recipes I found in videos, or written took the skin of the peaches off. What? I enjoy eating peach skin, why would I ever take that off? It is so much work and totally unnecessary. When I canned my fruit and veggies, I didn’t take the skin off of anything. Yes, I cut out the blemishes but that’s it. Even tomatoes, I kept them with the skin on. I found taking the skin off the fruit and vegetables is such a waste of time. Our canned goods never went bad because the skin was left on the fruit. Taking the skin off doesn’t affect canning time, taste, or how long your canned good will last you. I don’t understand why would anyone put themselves through such a tedious and frankly useless workload. If you can’t live with veggies and fruit skin on in your canned food, then go ahead and take it off. But I simply keep it on and save hours of time and workload. Ever tried to keep the skin on? Try it, I am sure you will be glad you skip all that extra work.
If your goal is to keep storing and preserving your food easily then these are the three methods I would recommend. The first method is to choose vegetables that can be stored just sitting on your shelves. Vegetables like butternut squash, spaghetti squash, potatoes, garlic, and onion, don’t require much to be stored. I keep mine in a basement in open paper bags or cardboard boxes. I do check on them once a month when I need something as I cook. Garlic and onions I like to tie them in bunches because I like the look of them and it’s not that difficult to tie them.
The second easy food-preserving method is freezing. I used freezer bags, filling them with a measured amount of vegetables like 2 cups of zucchini, for example, zip it up, flatten it, and lay it flat in the freezer so it takes as little space as possible. When I want to cook zucchini, I take the bag out already measured. Easy to store, easy to use when needed.
Third preserving method I like very much drying the harvest. I dry herbs and shell beans. I already talked about this article, and how I easily dry my herbs. Now let’s talk beans. When it’s time to harvest beans, I gather the pods in a mesh laundry bag and hang them in my shed. That’s it! I let them dry just like that. From time to time as I pass them quite often, I shake the laundry bag with the beans in it to rearrange them as they dry. I actually didn’t pay any attention to my bean bangs since summer and it’s winter as I am writing this article. They are still dry hanging in our shed. And they are alright. I will take from them when I need them. Shall I find some time, I would take them out of the mesh bag, shell them, and put them in either freezer, especially if not completely dry) or just a plastic bag and would keep them just sitting on my shelves. Nothing complicated. We love bean soups made of large colorful, yummy beans. I love to grow them, especially pole beans. They are easy to grow, I haven’t had anything destroying or eating them. They look stunning while blooming. And they produce a lot! They also look oh-so-beautiful creating green arches in my garden.
If you have not tried growing pole beans, I would strongly recommend you try it. Built a simple arch using galvanized cattle fence panel fastened in the ground or on the sides of your raised beds and let the beans climb it on both sides. Beans eventually meet on the top of the arch and bloom red and white in my case. Hummingbirds love to munch on the nectar, bees buzz around them. It’s such a joy to watch all the life and buzz beans bring into the garden. They produce a lot of harvests considering how little space they take. And they are one of the easiest to store vegetables.
Did I say I would give you only three easy ways to preserve food? Well, here is a bonus one. It’s also one of my favorites! It’s fermenting. Fermenting food is very healthy for our guts as by correct fermenting a beneficial bacteria is created which helps our guts.
Instead of caning, I like to ferment my foods. Fermenting does not require any heating, cooking, no extra equipment. All you need to ferment the food you most probably have at home already. I like to ferment especially cabbage, cucumbers, beets, carrot, and cauliflower. You can ferment almost anything really. You can ferment garlic, tomatoes, onions, and corn. Fermented foods last a long time without any special storage. I like to keep my fermented cucumbers in my wine cooler, in plastic buckets. I am planning to ferment my own cabbage. Hopefully, I will have enough this coming season to fill up a 5-gallon bucket and let it ferment just keeping it in the basement, in the coolest room once it starts fermenting.
Look up easy-to-do fermenting recipes online. All you need is water, salt, some plastic or creaming vessel, and the vegetable you would like to ferment. I don’t have any fancy special fermenting equipment and get things done correctly.
What to do when my garden didn’t produce enough food
Do not worry, first of all. I am in the same boat. Most home gardeners are in the same boat and have the same problem as you. But we don’t look at it as a problem, rather we see it as a norm. First of all, be open-minded. Here is the revelation: You don’t have to grow everything you want to store. Most probably you won’t be able to harvest as much as you need, and some crops will fail, and you still might have time to build your soil, expand your garden, and learn a few gardening tricks. It’s totally alright and normal if your garden doesn’t’ produce nearly enough of what you need. Be open-minded, and do not be frustrated by it. Instead, look around and think of it as an opportunity to work with other gardeners and farmers, and support each other.
Do not be limited to what your garden can provide when it comes to storing food. It’s totally fine to buy food from local farms, farm stands, stand-alone vegetables stand, and stores. But produce in its prime time when it’s cheapest because there is a lot of it. Buy what you need and store it.
If you have extra something you can exchange it with other gardeners, and neighbors, sell it on the local online platforms, and marketplace, and use the money to buy what you need. That’s what I do. I sell ornamental grass which grows on my property, I also sell seedings if I have extra, or I sell Hosta which grows like a weed in my garden. I put the money toward my food storage, my garden, equipment, get extra new seedlings or seeds for next year. If it grows in my garden and I can’t eat it, I usually propagate it and sell it. If it doesn’t have a purpose, it’s not in my garden, even if it’s not edible.
By exchanging, selling, or buying plants, from your garden, you will be able to meet other local gardeners, discover new varieties, and support local farmers who create one of the most important parts of the food chain. Support each other.
What to do with the harvest if no time to preserve
Yes, I deal with that too. That’s why I pick vegetables that are as easy to store as wash, cut, and freeze, most of the time.
If you don’t have time to preserve the harvest, then put them in a plastic container, close the lid, put it in your fridge, and get to it once you have time. Most fruit and vegetable can be stored like this for up to 2-4 weeks.
I also like to accumulate more harvest this way. Let’s say I have only 2 zucchini ready to pick, and the rest is not ready. I pick those ready and store them in a plastic container in my fridge. In a week or two I will have more zucchini to harvest and then I would preserve them all at once.
How to pick fail-proof vegetables
There is no such thing as failproof vegetables, to be totally honest. But there are some that are easy to grow, depending on your growing zone, area, and your soil. With some least fail crops, you will have a greater chance to succeed. Before planting a garden, I never could understand why everyone in my neighborhood grows tomatoes. It’s just a tomato, it’s not even my favorite veggie to eat, so why do many people grow them? I understood why people grow tomatoes after I grew them myself. Here is the answer, tomatoes grow like weeds and always bear fruit. It’s very easy to grow tomatoes, and if they are an indeterminate variety, they keep on growing the whole season! You can eat them fresh, dry them, ferment them, or can them whole or chopped, or as a sauce. You can eat them red or green, put them on your pizza, or make a sauce or salsa. You can cut the suckers of the main plant and stick them directly in the ground and they just take off. In my garden tomatoes grow like weeds! I enjoy growing them more than eating them! It’s one of the easiest veggies to grow.
Pick vegetables that are disease resistant, grow well in your local area, and don’t have many pests. My close-to-fail-proof veggies are tomatoes, garlic, butternut squash, pumpkin squash, beans, and herbs.
Enjoy the process!
Establishing a pantry-stocking garden is a process that you should rather enjoy than dislike. Enjoy the process not only the final results. If you enjoy sowing, watching your plants grow, watching watering them, enjoying a time of harvest and even storing them, that’s the way to do this!
I met a couple of gardeners or past gardeners who don’t grow anything anymore, who complained about how stressed they were when things went wrong as it’s not normal in this world. Just look around you, many things go not perfectly fine, including gardening. Yes, you will have plants that die, plants eaten by pests, and plants that don’t produce any harvest. You will have disappointment. But you will also have all the joy of growing your garden and walking through it. You will have the joy of eating something you grew, storing a little at the beginning. Count your blessings, not your disappointments. Do not be frustrated when something goes wrong, but rather know that it is to be expected. Learn from it and move on. Gardening is growing yourself up too. Enjoy the process, learn from it and you will be a happy gardener.
If I store just 3 crops from my garden, I consider it a success. My 3-go to veggies for easy storage are the ones I don’t have to touch, they just sit on the shelves and do great. It’s butternut squash, spaghetti squash, and garlic. Those 3 always deliver, even though my garlic was tiny last year, I was still able to store quite a bunch and it smells so strong, I love it. I keep it in the shed and come for it every time I need it in cooking. No fuzz with those three, they’re my golden pantry staples I will always grow.
I hope, all this information will help, inspire, and encourage you greatly when starting your own pantry garden! If I did it, you can do it too!
What is a pantry stocking garden?
