With the COVID-19 pandemic, we are spending most of our time at home, where this extended sabbatical can get boring for some people, some adopt healthy and profitable hobbies. One such hobby is gardening.
Growing organic fruits and vegetables in your backyard can be quite beneficial, apart from the healthy diet, you also get to start some fun hobbies like canning, which will also help you prevent wastage.
Growing and canning your fruits and vegetables will allow you to make your home more self-sufficient, beautiful, and healthy. Furthermore, you may be thinking that canning is difficult, but it is a piece of cake. All you need is a couple of clean mason jars and a pot of boiling water.
Therefore, today I am going to tell you about some of the best fruits and vegetables that you can grow for canning. Keep reading to learn more.
Blueberries:
Delicious blueberries are the perfect fruit to grow in your garden if you value aesthetics. The beautiful low shrubs are on par with any decorative shrubbery you may plant in your backyard, and they give delicious and nutritious blueberries as well.
As far as the canning is concerned, blueberries are an excellent candidate, because you can use them for some homemade jam, or you can preserve them to use as a pie filling.
Peppers:
Whenever I grow peppers in my backyard, I always end up with more than I can use. And you can only store them in the refrigerator for so long.
I have dried the peppers before to preserve them, but that takes a lot of time and effort, and then they need to be ground as well, which is a tedious and dangerous task as well.
Therefore, whether it is bell peppers or jalapenos, consider canon instead of drying. Canned peppers can be used in almost any recipe. They are going to taste better than any store-bought dried peppers.
You can use the canned peppers to make hot sauce, salsa or chili as well.
Cannabis:
Well, I know that cannabis isn’t a fruit or a vegetable, but hear me out. It is an herb and a very beneficial one. The vast medical benefits of cannabis have been proved through numerous studies, and most states have also legalized the use of medical and recreational cannabis.
Though growing cannabis is regulated, you can still grow a small amount for personal use in most states. Apart from the apparent advantage of preserving your weed, canning also adds to the intensity of the THC content of the bud. It heightens the aroma and adds to the flavor as well.
Therefore, consider visiting http://cannawholesalers.to/ to learn more about growing cannabis, and to buy some high-quality buds and seeds.
Carrots:
Carrots are delicious and easy to grow, and they are a vegetable that can be used in both savory and sweet recipes. However, like many other vegetables, you will get some extra produce when you grow them in your backyard.
You can freeze your carrots, but for a delicious and flavorful option, consider canning. You can make a sweet carrot jam or pie filling, or you can also make some tangy and spicy pickled carrots, that are great to eat on their own, and can be used in many delicious recipes.
Cucumbers
Whether they are fresh or pickled, cucumbers have a fantastic taste and a distinctive texture. They are healthy and quite delicious, and the cucumber vines can make your garden look amazing. Cucumbers are often used to make pickles used in many recipes, and I would suggest doing the same.
There are loads of pickling recipes available on the web, and the longer you let the cucumbers sit in the pickling juice, the better and more flavorful they get. Therefore, canning is a great option, because pickled cucumbers sure beat ones that have been frozen for a couple of months.
Tomatoes:
Tomatoes are a great vegetable to grow in many climates; however, they tend to go bad very quickly. Freezing is an option, but that also only works for s0 long, and it can deteriorate the flavor of the tomatoes. Therefore, you should consider canning your tomatoes.
The best way, in my opinion, is to make some canned tomato sauce. This canned sauce can be used to create a marinara sauce in a hurry, and it can also help in the preparation of many recipes like lasagna, pizza, or simple tomato soup.
However, consider adding some lemon juice to the sauce to up the acidity, which helps in preserving the flavor of the tomatoes.
Garlic:
Garlic is another ingredient that is used in almost every recipe, and having some organic homegrown garlic can add to the flavor of your dishes.
Though garlic is shelf-stable for a long time without preserving, the purpose of canning is to add some extra delicious flavor. You can pickle the garlic and use it in many savory recipes.
Just wait till you taste the garlic bread made from pickled garlic, you will never go back to the traditional garlic bread.
You can also make some garlic and ginger paste and preserve it through canning.
Cherries:
Growing cherries is not as easy as some of the other fruits and vegetables on this list. However, imagine how glamourous a cherry tree would look in the middle of your backyard. Apart from the delicious fruit, cherry trees are a marvel of nature, and they will be an incomparable design feature of your home.
One the cherry tree is grown, and it produces a lot of fruit, you will always have more than you can store, and preserving it as some cherry pie filling or jam is an excellent option.
Final thoughts:
Though there are many other ways of preserving fruits and vegetables, canning helps you get some additional and delicious flavors in your product, and home-canned foods can be shelf-stable for many months. Therefore, there were some of the best fruits and vegetables, ideal for canning, that you should consider growing in your home garden.
Author’s bio:
James is a physical and mental well-being expert. He has been trying to help people all around the globe by writing about topics such as anxiety and insomnia. He believes words are an excellent medium to showcase knowledge. You can peruse his site at http://cannawholesalers.net/