Gardening for self-sufficiency is different than gardening for fun. When we lived back in the suburbs, we had a small 10×15 or so garden plot, and each year we’d sit down and talk about what “fun” types of things we’d attempt to grow for the year. Preservation had that same “fun” theme, as we’d can pickles for the purpose of always having one of our favorite foods around, and we tried freezing green beans simply because we wanted to learn the process.

However, one of our goals in ditching suburbia for the sake of country living was that we wanted to begin to really turn our garden into a serious source of food for our family of six. What started out as a fun hobby is slowly becoming a vital source of food for the entire year. As such, the gardening we do now is vastly different than the gardening we did back in the suburbs. Read more