I had a nightmare last night. Perhaps not everyone will understand, but it seriously scared me. I was having a very difficult dealing with it in my dream and wrapping my mind around how such a disaster could happen. Basically, one of my daughters and some other girls from the neighborhood had prematurely harvested the garden, by uprooting every plant and throwing them on the sidewalk. I was completely dumbfounded. How could they not have known???
That's a picture of the culprit.
All of this was gone...
And this too. There was nothing left but bare dirt and mulch. I did see a few weeds, funny how details like that stick out to you, but all the food was gone.
All these propagated passion flower vines, elderberries and gooseberries had disappeared.
On the bright side, one of these propagated figs were still there, but the rest had DISAPPEARED!
In my dream I was so frustrated with the situation
that I made a girl who normally looks like this.
And made her look like this. It was bad, I know that. One lady in the dream even tried to calm me down. I attempted to lay a guilt trip on her and act like she was in the wrong, so I asked the woman, "Do you know why you'd be bad in court? Because you never get convicted!" (implying that she should be convicted that she was treating me wrong). It may have been a good enough line to use in the future outside of dreamland, but we will see.
Anyway, back to the question in regard to this nightmare, "How could they not have known???" Interestingly, in reality they do know. Both my daughter and her accomplices in this dream understand the blessing of a garden. They know that ultimately, in reality, there is a source for food, and it does not magically appear in grocery stores. Raw fruits and vegetables, unprocessed and organic, were a staple food for millennia. Now, especially in the "first world", they have almost become a rare, over-priced delicacy. Yet, if we have dirt available to us, we can grow our own for a meager investment of time, energy, and money, we can grow out own! Sometimes, there is no real investment of money if we are willing to save seeds.
This is a young Kiwi vine that the kids and I started from seed. We had already spent the 33 cents on the fruit as a food source, but spit out one of the seeds and planted it. Now, a few months later, we have a healthy little vine. It may take a few years to get an edible return on this particular investment, but the principle displayed in this example will remain valid for many years to come.
No matter what the original source, we need edible foods on an almost daily basis. My frustration in the nightmare was not so much that my hard work had been destroyed, but that it would never reach its full potential. The longed for harvest would never come. It is that harvest that is the focus when we are growing plants to eat, and it is preserving that harvest that concerns me. Only so much can be immediately consumed raw or cooked. The rest must be preserved somehow, or the harvest, though it may have been gathered in, will ultimately be lost.
For various reasons, the simple recipe and hot water bath traditional canning method is one of my favorites. Sometimes these canned foods can be enjoyed years into the future. Freezing garden vegetables is good, but not if the electricity goes out. Plus, one way or another, you generally have to pay for electricity. Dehydrating and fermenting are also valid options that can also be preserved in jars, but I don't have as much experience with them.
To really be saving a penny and negating the need to earn that penny, we need to not only get a return on our investment (the harvest) but also protect it (preserving).
The method that I generally use is a mixture of either half or one third vinegar with the rest being distilled water with pickling salt added to it. I'll boil it and pour it into jars over my vegetables, and give them a hot water bath for around 15-20 minutes (a little less for crisp pickles). The picture above is some Chinese Noodle Beans. Check out my post on them for a free seed giveaway. @papa-pepper/free-first-ever-steemit-seed-giveaway-garden-plant-spotlight-1-chinese-red-noodle-bean