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Tuesday, July 19, 2022

When the Garden Is the Keeping Place for Produce

This amused me today.


This is what's left in my produce drawer, three carrots and a container of raspberries that I picked this morning.


And this is what's left in the fruit bowl, one head of garlic.

No, a grocery shopping trip is not right around the corner for me. And no, we're not going without produce. Someone who keeps a garden might understand why we have very little produce stored in the fridge and fruit bowl this week. Right about now, this point in the gardening season, I am harvesting almost all of the fruits and vegetables that we eat daily from our garden, berry patch, and orchard. That makes me smile.

But I was particularly amused when I opened the fridge and saw practically nothing, especially because I know how well we eat every day. 

When I do go grocery shopping next week, the only produce I am likely to buy are bananas (those will fill the fruit bowl for a few days) and carrots (it's too soon for garden carrots). We also have some canned and frozen produce to still use. We really do have a lot of fruits and vegetables on hand, both in the kitchen and in the garden.

10 comments:

  1. The garden is the best place to store your fruits and veggies for taste, but not if you're trying to out run the critters. A balancing act for sure.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Live and Learn,
      you're right about staying one step ahead of any critters or pests, as last week found me picking less than ripe cherries to dry once again after the raccoons and squirrels had figured out how to circumvent the chicken wire. What kinds of critters do you have that get into your garden? One of our neighbors mentioned a deer sighting in a yard. I haven't seen a deer in many years, myself. We mostly have rabbits, raccoons, squirrels and birds.

      Delete
    2. We have deer, chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits, and birds. There are groundhogs, raccoons, foxes, and coyotes around, but I haven't seen many of them in our yard. That may be because I'm not out at night much.

      Delete
    3. Hi Live and Learn,
      with all of that wildlife, I'm guessing you and Ward have built some good fences. We have coyotes, but for the most part they don't get into our gardens. There was one year with a mom and her pups visiting our backyard every afternoon, and they did eat plums right off the tree, whole, pit and all. And our one experience with a deer in the yard didn't cause any damage at all. He just wanted to sun himself. But the raccoons, squirrels and birds are another story.

      Delete
  2. Looks like my refrigerator. I was looking for a vegetable for dinner last night and there were two partial heads of cabbage just waiting so that was our veggie. I have a few carrots I missed for Sunday's dinner. Fresh veggies are the best.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Alice,
      Maybe a lot of us have fridges that look like Mother Hubbard's cupboard. I agree, fresh veggies do taste so much better and have a much better texture than preserved.

      Delete
  3. Isn't it nice to be able to run out to your yard to gather food for dinner? I'm glad I'm not the only one with a smallish amount of produce in my fridge (except when my husband goes on one of his berry-picking adventures!). I wonder what people would think of our eating habits if they only saw the contents of my fridge, but we do try to be healthy with our choices!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Kris,
      When I don't know what to fix for dinner during summer, I go out to the garden to see what needs using up. Your husband is a treasure. I love reading about his adventures cherry or berry picking with your son and daughter. With parents like the two of you, they (kids) will have wonderful memories to look back upon someday.

      Delete
  4. How I envy you and everyone here who has a garden. We spend a lot on buying fruits and vegetables at the store, despite looking for sales and clearances. We stopped gardening about a year ago when we thought of other plans for the back yard, but that has been postponed for now. We're debating whether to start a garden again, but we enjoy not having to tend a garden everyday. Plus with our local water shortages, maybe the correct civic minded choice is to buy produce grown elsewhere.

    Have a great day,
    Laura

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Laura,
      two years ago, I thought I would start scaling back our garden. Then with the pandemic and all making it hard to go shopping, I switched gears and actually increased our garden spaces.
      I've thought about the water usage as a factor in home-gardening. I try hard to save as much kitchen water as possible. And we've all agreed in our household to significantly shorten (or skip some days) our showers for the summer months, hoping that will offset the municipal water that we use for our fruits and vegetables. And of course, we're not using any municipal water for lawns. I hope my neighbors are okay with our brown lawn. So at least we're being thoughtful in our water usage.

      Delete

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