These harvest tips show you how to store fresh vegetables from your garden all year round.
How to Store Fresh Vegetables all Year Long
I am continually amazed at all the things that go on in a
vegetable garden. Each year is different — changed by the
weather, by my own “experiments” with fertility, by the varieties
in color, size, shape, taste, growing characteristics. Take
storage characteristics, for example. There are some vegetables
that can’t be stored while others can be thrown in a corner and
stay wonderful for six months. Go figure.
I grew up with my mother telling me there was no such word as
“can’t,” so I better fix that. You can store lettuce by drying
it. I just don’t know what to do with dried lettuce. Smoke it?
After more than 20 years of harvest success and failure, bounty
and boondoggle, I’ve planted just about everything that I thought
had a fighting chance in our northern climate, and the list that
follows, though not absolutely comprehensive, provides a
bird’s-eye view of how your produce should be doing at the end of
the season, as well as some storage secrets that will keep a
steady supply of it on your dinner plates through the year.
LETTUCE
There are a number of vegetables that I don’t store any longer
than they will keep in the refrigerator. Lettuce is one of these,
but I love lettuce so I want to have it fresh from the garden for
as long as possible. I extend the season in the spring by
starting seedlings in the house. The first lettuce from
transplants will reach the table in mid-June. That planting will
have pretty much gone by in a month, which is when the second
planting, planted from seed in mid-May, should be ready for
harvest. Plantings in mid-June, mid-July and mid-August will keep
the lettuce coming until November. We have even had lettuce from
the garden on the Thanksgiving table. People in more southern
climates may not think that is much of a feat, but our first fall
frost comes around September 20.
Lettuce is not killed by early frosts because the cell walls
are more elastic than most vegetables. When the water within the
cells expands as it freezes, the cell walls expand also. Tender
crops like cucumbers die at the first light frost because their
cell walls burst.
KALE, KOHLRABI, RADISH & TURNIP
Kale is another hardy vegetable that we don’t store. It is
wonderful in soups. I like it steamed and seasoned with vinegar.
This is the way I like spinach also. Spinach in the spring and
kale in the fall is the way I like it. I just don’t care for kale
well enough to want it around a lot. It will last longer in the
fall than lettuce and it seems to get better after a frost. I
can’t tell you how long kale will last because the deer always
cut the season short for me. One of these years I will keep them
out of the fall garden.
Kohlrabi, radish, and turnip are delightful in summer salads.
I can eat any of these right in the garden after wiping the soil
off on my jeans. Radishes grow so fast that I can’t keep up with
succession planting to keep new ones coming. We eat them fresh
from the garden as soon as the first ones get a little larger
than peas. I always plant radishes with parsnips, carrots, and
parsley. The radishes mark the row and shelter the
slow-to-germinate crops. When the later crops need the space, I
harvest all the radishes to make room. That may mean I’ve got
five pounds of radishes. They keep quite well for up to a month
if topped, washed, and put in a plastic bag in the refrigerator.
Sometimes, just to show off, I grow king-size radishes. They
are regular radishes, cherry bell is my favorite, but when grown
in good soil and mulched they can get almost as big as tennis
balls. It’s no big deal to grow them that large. The big deal is
when someone eats one expecting it to be pithy or woody and
finding it to have a perfect texture and superb taste. The mulch
assures stable moisture and keeps the soil temperature from
fluctuating as much as it would otherwise. The results are really
special.
We don’t store kohlrabi, radishes, or turnips as a rule.
Kohlrabi can be pickled. Daikon radishes and rutabagas provide
radish and turnip flavor in the winter and store easily in the
root cellar.
ASPARAGUS & ZUCCHINI
There are two vegetables that I really love in season,
asparagus and zucchini. If spring is kind, I can eat my first
asparagus on my birthday, May 10. It is just great steamed with
nothing on it, or with butter, or served with a little dressing.
The harvest is only about a month long, but what a month that is.
It is especially wonderful because it is the first fresh,
home-grown green for many months. I don’t crave asparagus until
some time in April, which is just right. I have a month of
expectation and a month of ecstasy. Asparagus can be
frozen or canned but it’s not anything that I will ever be
motivated to do.
Commercial growers harvest asparagus by cutting it off below
the ground. I presume this is done to get more weight. They then
let the ends dry out which makes them inedible. I cut the early
asparagus below ground level because I want to get an extra bite
or two from the first pickings. Later I will cut at ground level
or snap them off. When I bring the asparagus into the house I
bundle it together with two rubber bands. Then I cut the ends off
and stand the asparagus in water in the refrigerator. This keeps
it fresh until you eat it, and you won’t wind up with any
inedible fibrous ends that way.
Zucchini grows so fast that once it starts coming in you have
to harvest it every other day. When I had a market garden and
supplied restaurants with zucchini, I harvested every day and a
half to get perfectly sized vegetables. I think they are best
about six inches long.
When I was a bachelor in New York City my favorite meal was
lamb chops, baked potato, and zucchini. I was not cognizant of
seasons at that time in my life and bought my favorite vegetable
in the winter when the price was notable. That is how I came to
value zucchini. I don’t even think I would like zucchini in the
winter now but when it is in season I revel in the bounty.
CELERY, EGGPLANT & PEPPER
There are three more vegetables in the we-don’t-store-them
category: celery, eggplant, and pepper. We don’t grow celery very often
mainly because I am not geared up for starting seedlings in
February. Then they have to be taken care of until late May
before they can be put out in the garden and left on their own.
Then they should be blanched or else they are too strong and
stringy. Celery can be stored in the root cellar for two to three
months, so the books say. That is an experience that still awaits
me.
Eggplant and pepper are not as bad as celery but they do need
to be started indoors and cool summer weather can severely cut
back the crop. Fans of dehydrating vegetables tout that method of
storing these. We have stored them in ratatouille which we froze
or canned. We try to get an overdose while they are in season but
that isn’t easy as there is so much coming from the garden at the
same time … like corn.
CORN
Corn! Ah, this is another ecstasy vegetable. We plant early,
middle, and late season varieties to get continuous corn from
mid-July to mid-September. I have been told that frozen corn on
the cob is as good as fresh, but I don’t believe it. We have a
lot of unused freezer space and we haven’t even bothered to try
it. Some say just put the ears in the freezer right from the
garden. Others say shuck them and put them in plastic bags.
Others say shuck them and blanch them before putting them in
plastic bags.
We stick with the old rule of getting the water boiling before
picking the corn. If you drop one on the way in, don’t stop to
pick it up. The sugar in corn does turn to starch but the
transformation doesn’t begin immediately and it takes a day or
more to start to be noticeable. At least that is what I have read
Me, I enjoy jogging in from the garden with an armload of freshly
picked corn.
Harvesting can be a little tricky because you can’t see the
kernels. The best indication is the drying or browning of the
silk. If you have raccoons, the corn will be ready to harvest
about three days after the coons start eating it. If you are into
sharing, plant a lot. With luck, your generosity will be noticed
by porcupines as well.
Our favorite method of preparing corn is to cook it in the
husk over coals. When the coals are ready I pick the corn and put
it on the grill. The corn can actually go directly on the fire.
The moisture in the husks keeps it from burning. Keep an eye on
the husks, turning frequently. When the husks get brown, before
they start to burn, the corn will be done. Pull back the husks,
this is a little hot on the fingers but it is a good time to show
off. Hand the ears around with the husk as handle. It cools in
the air shortly after you have burned your fingers. We serve this
outside with a stick of butter to rub the corn across. When
finished, everyone gets to try their luck at lobbing the cob into
the compost bin.
Sweet corn can be frozen on or off the cob and canned. It can
also be dried. Of course, some corn is supposed to be dried.
Popcorn needs to be dried but not too much because it is the
moisture in the kernels that makes them pop when it expands. We
let popcorn dry on the stalk as long as possible, which usually
means until the birds get hungry. Then we pull the husks back,
tie them in bundles, and hang them in a dry place for a few
weeks. Then the kernels are shelled off the cob and stored in an
airtight jar so the drying is stopped.
Field or flint corn can’t get too dry. We treat it the same as
popcorn except for the shelling which takes place later. If it is
not dry enough, it will gum up the grinder when you come to
grind. We leave it hanging from the rafters until we are ready to
use it or until we decide it is getting dusty.
You need a big garden to grow all these varieties of corn as
they all need to be separated during pollination. The separation
can be either space or time. The Handbook for Vegetable
Growers by James Edward Knott (John Wiley & Sons, New
York) says that different varieties of corn should be planted a
mile apart. As long as you are growing for your own table and not
to sell seed you can gamble on opposite corners of the garden. If
there is some cross pollination it will most likely result in
partially filled ears or skipped rows of kernels.
A Storer’s Hall of Fame:
ONIONS
The opposite end of the storability scale from lettuce has got
to be onions. The rules for onions are: don’t let them freeze,
don’t store them wet or in a wet place, and don’t store rotten
ones. Accomplishing this is just too easy. First, when onions are ready to be harvested, they lie down so there is no
trick to knowing when to harvest (By the way, you can harvest an
onion any time you feel like it during the season). You can
harvest the onions for storage any time after they lie down and
before a hard frost. They won’t rot, get eaten by anything, or
lose flavor or quality in anyway. When I get around to it I pull
all the onions and drop them right there in the row. They can lie
on top of the ground like this for a casual period of time unless
frost threatens. They can also be rained upon, which will clean
them up a bit, as well as stand full sun. The idea is to let them
dry and cure a bit. The soil that may have come up with their
roots will fall off.
Not all of the onions will lie down at the same time, so you
may have some with practically dry tops and others that still
have green tops. If you can’t leave them in the garden until all
the tops are dry, you can move them to a porch or some other dry
place where they can be spread out to finish the drying
process.
The final step is to pick each one up by hand and feel it
while putting it in an onion bag or a basket or whatever. My
“feeling it” is really just giving it a squeeze designed to pull
off dirt and perhaps the outer skin. It is all accomplished in
the time it takes to pick up an onion and transfer it to the bag
or basket. I’m not trying to make them picture-book clean. Mostly
I want to be sure there are no soft ones. A soft onion is a
rotten onion and you don’t want any of them in storage.
There are invariably some thick-neck onions. These are set
aside for early use. I can taste onion soup as I write this.
The ideal temperature for storing onions is just above
freezing. In our house the closest space for that temperature is
the front hall. It is unheated. Cold outside air comes in around
the door and warmer air rises to the second floor to keep it a
cold but above-freezing place. But don’t fret about finding the
perfect place. We sometimes braid onions and hang them from the
rafters in the kitchen. I don’t think there is a warmer place in
our house. These onions sprout earlier than onions in a basket on
the floor but they still last through March. It’s a good idea to
check through a bag or basket once a month or so just in case a
poor-quality onion got stored by mistake. However, if your nose
is working you can probably rely on it to tip you off to a
potential problem.
SQUASH & PUMPKINS
Winter squash and pumpkins are even easier. When the first
frost hits, the leaves of these vine crops die, leaving them exposed and
easy to find. Cut or twist them off the vine leaving the stem
attached to the fruit. I have read various things about curing
these vegetables on the sun porch or next to the wood stove. I’ve
even followed those directions once or twice. It may make a
difference but none that I’ve ever seen.
They can be stored just about anywhere in your living space.
The optimum temperature is right around 60 degrees Fahrenheit.We have stored
them on the kitchen floor, on shelves, and under the bed. We have
been notified of squash rotting by fruit flies. Larger pumpkins
and larger squash will last up to six months, but you might want
to keep a close eye on the smaller ones after three months. They
can go from a soft spot to mush pretty fast.
ROOT CROPS
Root crops need a humid atmosphere. They also like to be as
cold as possible without freezing. Our cellar with a dirt floor
and water running through it was ideal until we put in a furnace.
I’ve been trying to bring it back to the good old days ever
since. This year I walled off a section, but if it is still too
warm, I may try fooling around with fans and thermostats.
The ideal storage place for root crops is right where they
grew. The is fine for parsnips which can freeze without bursting
their cell walls. I don’t know if parsnips belong in this
grouping or if they should be classified as one of the vegetables
we eat straight from the garden. They can be eaten in the fall
but we never do. They are the first garden vegetable eaten from
the garden in the spring. I have bent spading forks trying to get
them out of the ground before the frost freed them.
Carrots, beets, potatoes, daikon radish, and rutabaga will rot
if frozen. They can be protected from freezing by insulating them
from the winter cold, and this can be done by covering them with
enough hay to keep the ground from freezing. That takes a lot of
hay, however. In our climate I need to use a whole bale thickness
and the cover has to extend about eight inches from crops to keep
the frost from coming in under the bales. I usually use this
method for carrots, as I like them best and appreciate solid
carrots especially in late winter. I try to get a couple of rows
of carrots growing close together and reaching peak maturity in
September. If I put the bales on too soon, rodents may move in.
Too late, and the carrots freeze and are lost.
I wrote about root storage in the March issue. As with so much
of gardening, there are a lot of different ways to get good
results, from a hole in the ground to a humidity-controlled
walk-in refrigerator. I like to eat low on the tech and energy
hog. I also like to make things as easy as possible. I do most of
my storage in wooden bins that are kept off the dirt floor of our
cellar by resting on rocks.
CABBAGE
Cabbage is the transition vegetable from unprocessed storage
to processed. Winter cabbage will last three to four months in
cold high humidity, just the same as root crops. The only real
difference is that root crops usually lose their goodness by
getting dry and limp. Cabbage usually rots. Therefore, you don’t
want to fill a box with cabbage in your cellar and forget about
it. Check your cabbage every now and then to make sure none are
rotting, because if you don’t discover it until you can smell it
in the house, you are not going to be living with happy campers
until the smell goes away. In fact, you may want to go
away.
The beauty of cabbage is that it is the only green vegetable
than can be stored for any length of time without being
processed. If you are trying to eat as much as possible from your
garden, this is a very important feature. Lettuce from June
through November and coleslaw from November through February
still leaves four months with no fresh green vegetables. Those
four months are the period of the year when a died-in-the-wool
self-sufficient gardener is building an appreciation for fresh
vegetables. We process some vegetables to get through this period
without feeling deprived. Cabbage is one of the vegetables we
process.
Old-Fashioned Fermenting
Our first adventure into making sauerkraut lives on in our
memories, especially Barbara’s. Kraut is made with late cabbage
and sea or pickling salt. That’s it. On a beautiful crisp fall
day I brought some firm heads of late cabbage in from the garden.
The outer leaves had been eaten by cabbage worms but the heads
looked great after the eaten leaves were removed. I quartered the
cabbages and cut out the core. Barbara shredded them. I weighed
the shredded cabbage and when I had five pounds I mixed it with
three tablespoons of salt and let it sit for 10 or 15 minutes.
Then I packed the cabbage into a large crock.
It was a lovely old crock which weighed probably 25 pounds and
stood almost two feet high. We were going to have a lot of
sauerkraut to go with the pork we were also raising that
year.
Barbara kept shredding and I kept mixing and packing, making
sure all the air was forced out of the kraut without breaking the
shredded cabbage. When the kraut was up to about six inches from
the top I covered it with cheesecloth. I had made a disk of oak
that just fit into the crock. The idea was to hold down the
cheesecloth so the brine that would form as the cabbage fermented
would come up over the cover and seal off the kraut from the air.
A rock on top of the oak finished the job.
The crock was placed on the floor on the high end of our
kitchen. I should explain that our house is 200 years old and
there is not a level floor or square corner in it. The high end
was farthest from the woodburning kitchen range which we were
using at the time. We thought that was the best place to find a
70 degree temperature.
In two days the brine was covering the oak disk. When scum
formed on the brine we were to lift off the rock and disk and
cloth and skim off any of the white scum that did not adhere to
the cloth, then replace the cloth with a clean one, scald the lid
and weight, and replace them. I did this the first time it needed
to be done but then, as fate would have it, I got a job that
called me away for a week. I left Barbara in charge of the
sauerkraut scum skimming operation. That’s Hollywood.
It didn’t go well. First, I had neglected to tell her that the
top of the crock was not a perfect circle, nor was the handmade
disk. The disk would only fit a certain way. Second, she
neglected to notice that the cheesecloth was tucked down
around the kraut, not around the disk. When she tried to
reassemble the cover it wouldn’t fit into the crock. As she tried
to make it fit, the crock split open, flooding her feet in brine.
The brine continued to run across the kitchen floor until it
puddled at the low end of the kitchen. Did I mention that
lightning came into the house and melted a burner on the stove
and that the dog had an epileptic fit that week? Oh yeah, Barbara
was very pregnant, too. As you might imagine, sauerkraut has a
special meaning for us.
While sauerkraut making may seem like pickling, it isn’t,
because it uses only salt. It is not salting either, which is a
method of food storage that is not used much at all today. The
reason salting is not used is that the salt has to be washed off
before the vegetable so stored can be used and much of the
nutrient value of the vegetables goes with the salt. We have
salted one vegetable, parsley. The leaves are chopped and packed
in salt in a small jar similarly to the cabbage in kraut making.
The salt keeps the leaves green and, since parsley is used as a
seasoning and usually at the same time as salt, the salted
parsley is used in place of salt when both are desired. Another
way to keep parsley around is to grow it in a pot as a house
plant.
And what is sauerkraut if it is not salted or pickled? It is
fermented.
Pickling
Pickling uses salt and vinegar with spices and herbs. A number
of vegetables can be pickled, the most obvious being cucumbers.
Green beans pickled with dill and hot pepper is a favorite of
mine. Green cherry tomatoes are another. Pickling is more fun
than any other vegetable processing because you can be creative.
It is not just a matter of getting things clean and temperatures
right.
In the days before generally available processed foods on
supermarket shelves, when most households had shelves of
home-canned food as well as a full root cellar, pickles were the
most frequently given or swapped vegetable. Storage of all the
other vegetables was pretty straight forward. Everybody did it
about the same way with the same results. Pickles were the items
in which experimentation might bring forth a special product.
Think of the subtle flavors of cloves, turmeric, mustard seed,
dry mustard, celery seed, cinnamon, allspice, honey, maple syrup,
brown sugar, white sugar, ginger, nutmeg, white peppercorns,
black peppercorns, horseradish, garlic, saccharin, curry powder,
bay leaf, hot peppers, hot pepper pods, cayenne pepper, mace, and
dill. Perhaps I should say, “Think of them as subtle
flavors.” They can all be used in varying amounts in making
pickles; pickling such fresh-from-the-garden vegetables as
cucumbers, onions, cauliflower, green peppers, red peppers, green
beans, wax beans, green tomatoes, corn, cabbage, beets, zucchini,
and horseradish. A grape leaf stuck in each jar of pickles before
sealing will help keep them crisp.
Canning
There are two processes we use to store food from the garden:
canning and freezing. They both require energy, as in a stove and
freezer, which causes them to have an expense that other storage
methods don’t have. Vegetables do lose some goodness in
processing which is why we put it at the bottom of our list of
storage methods. Before I go on I should say that we process our
pickles. It wasn’t done in olden days but using a boiling water
bath stops bacteria that can work in an acidic environment and
cause spoilage. It also stops enzyme action and insures a good
seal on the canning jars.
We only can one vegetable other than the pickles which are
pickled and canned. That is tomatoes. The story of our
first experience with canning tomatoes is another memorable
story. But before I get started, turn to Deanna Kawatski’s guide
to canning for a complete list of materials and instructions.
It was a beautiful fall day, the most wonderful time of the
year in Maine. The kitchen floor was crowded with vegetables that
had been brought in the night before as our first hard frost was
sure. A couple of bushels of ripe tomatoes were joined by a
bushel of green tomatoes, pumpkins, winter squash, and onions.
The tomatoes were to be dealt with on this fine day. With the
book propped up over the sink, Barbara and her assistant, me,
began to learn a new skill, food processing.
We assembled all the equipment: canning jars, canner, assorted
pots, knives, jar lifters, pot holders. The top of the stove was
filled with the canner and pots all filled with water and being
brought to a boil. Cleanliness is given such emphasis in most
books that the novice is sure to get the entire kitchen close to
operating room condition. Heaven forbid an enzyme should
survive.
The tomatoes are washed; I did that. Then they are dipped in
boiling water for half a minute or so. This is called scalding.
It loosens the skin so it slips off easily. I did that, too,
while Barbara read ahead and supervised so that everything would
continue apace. As I dropped the peeled tomatoes into a bowl
Barbara took them out and cut and packed them into the canning
jars. Then she ran a knife around inside the jar to liberate any
air bubbles. The tomatoes were packed to about half an inch of
the top. She wiped the rim of the jar to make sure it was clean
and smooth so the top would seal properly and placed the lid on
loosely as directed.
“It says to cover the jars with half and inch of water,” she
said. “Won’t the water get into the jars?”
What did I know, but being a man and being asked a question, I
felt I had to come up with an answer. “Guess not. If that’s what
the book says.” By this time the kitchen was so full of steam
that we could barely see each other. Barbara put the jars into
the boiling water of the tanner and proceeded to add more boiling
water to cover the tops. The kitchen had become unbearably hot,
especially with my hands full of scalding tomatoes, so I opened a
window. Cold air swirled into the room. As the dew point dropped
and the moisture-laden air condensed into drops of water not
unlike rain, Barbara could see through the fog that the jars were
indeed filling with water from the canner. This precipitated
another shower in the kitchen, this time of tears.
We have told the kraut and canning stories many times in the
hope that they amuse and that they help others to go forward
bravely to learn new things. Doing something for the first time
is usually a bit stressful. After each misadventure I think we
become a little more philosophical. After all, it wasn’t the end
of the world. It wasn’t a waste of tomatoes either. Nor was it a
waste of time, because we learned something.
What did we learn about the water getting into the jars? I’m
still a bit puzzled because we have checked many books since and
they all say the same thing. Perhaps we were going too slowly and
the inside of the jar had cooled too much and in came the water.
Deanna will fill in the details.
Freezing
We freeze peas, spinach, green beans, and broccoli. We have
frozen brussels sprouts and cauliflower but our taste for
brussels sprouts can generally be fulfilled by eating them in
season. Their season is October through December if I can protect
them from the deer. We are not big fans of cooked cauliflower so
it is usually a fresh-from-the-garden vegetable with only about a
month-long season in late spring.
Freezing is really pretty easy. Pick the vegetables when they
are at their peak and process them as soon as possible. For peas
and beans this may mean planting more than you will use so that
you have enough in a single picking to process. These two
vegetables produce over a two-week season. A 25-foot row provides
enough in one picking to make it worthwhile to freeze. Over the
two-week period the 25-foot row will produce two or three times
as much as we can or want to eat, however. We could plant shorter
rows and hold the peas in the refrigerator while enough
accumulate to process but they will not be as good as they can
be.
Spinach is very cooperative. When it reaches its peak you want
to move fairly fast as it won’t be long before it bolts.
The actual “processing” in freezing takes place in the
freezer. I mentioned people telling me they had success freezing
corn on the cob doing no more than putting it in the freezer. I
believe them. The preparation before putting the vegetables in
the freezer is solely for the purpose of getting rid of enzymes
that will cause the vegetable to deteriorate. Maybe if vegetables
are frozen directly from the garden, the enzymes don’t have time
to get involved.
We prepare vegetables for freezing first by preparing them
just as we would for cooking: popping, washing, cutting, or
whatever, depending on the vegetable. Then we put them in a
strainer that can be placed in a pot of boiling water. We have
plenty of ice to keep ice water good and cold. We plunge the
veggies into boiling water, which is called blanching, for a
minute or two. The books say longer. Then we lift the strainer
with the vegetables out of the hot water and plunge them into ice
water for another couple of minutes. It sounds like a Swedish
bath, doesn’t it? Then the vegetables are dried on a towel and
put into a freezer container of some kind and put in the freezer.
They are spread out in the freezer so they will freeze quickly.
That’s it.
When we are ready to eat frozen vegetables they go directly
from the freezer to the stove top. In a few minutes they are
ready, having lost very little garden goodness in the
process.
I have not covered drying. We have done very little of it. I
mentioned corn for cornmeal and popcorn. Dry beans and peas are
also pretty easy. We usually have some of both in the garden
because I am not diligent in cleaning up garden plants when they
go by. If left alone the plants will dry and the pods left at the
end of the season will dry along with the vines. These can be
harvested, shaken or popped from the pods, and stored in jars.
The peas should be split and the husks blown away leaving split
peas for soup. I haven’t done this so I’m going to leave you to
your own theories on how best to do it.
Barbara dries herbs by collecting them at their peak, before
flower, and hanging them from the kitchen ceiling. Once dry she
crumbles them into various jars and cans she has collected over
the years for the purpose.
For More Information
Battered and splattered books we have used over the years are
Putting Food By by Ruth Hertzberg, Beatrice Vaughan, and
Janet Greene (Stephen Greene Press, Brattleboro, VT); Keeping
the Harvest by Nancy Thurber & Gretchen Mead (Garden Way
Publishing, Charlotte, VT); Stocking Up, edited by Carol
Stoner (Rodale Press, Emmaus, PA); Joy ofCooking by Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker
(N.A.L. Dutton, New York); and Ball Blue Book (Ball
Brothers Co., Muncie, IN).
Each garden brings new successes and unexpected events that
are not always wonderful. In all my years of gardening I have
never ended a growing season feeling that there were no
challenges left. There was even a year when I had a full-scale
zucchini failure, so even us experts are occasionally caught with
our pants down.