If your garden produces more fruit or vegetables than you can eat, try this
I recently opened a book, which fully lives up to the promise of its subtitle: “How to Grow a Garden for Fermenting, Canning, Pickling, Dehydrating, Freeze Drying & More.”
Appropriately titled “The Preserver’s Garden” (Cold Springs Press, 2026), this volume, written by Staci and Jeremy Hill, is essential to anyone who has ever had too many apricots or tomatoes to consume and didn’t want them to go to waste. With the processing techniques found here, you will never worry about what to do with an overly abundant harvest again.
Speaking of tomatoes, I learned that there is a whole category of gardeners’ most popular vegetable that is meant especially for sandwiches. The varieties in question are known as slicer tomatoes. The skin of these varieties come in many colors: They may be black (Black Beauty), purple (Cherokee Purple), yellow (Pineapple, Gold Medal, Kellogg’s Breakfast) or pink (Pink Brandywine, Arkansas Traveler). The pink varieties are known for their meatiness, with a minimum of seeds and little “interior goo.” Their unique flavor makes them candidates for soups, sauces, and salsas as well.
Slicers are recommended for those who have never been particularly fond of tomatoes but are open to change. “If you want to become more of a tomato eater, try an heirloom slicer on a grilled cheese sandwich,” the authors advise, gently spiced with basil salt. “There are few things we crave more, or that bring us more joy than the first grilled-cheese-and-tomato sandwich after a long winter.”
This is a book where you learn something new on every page. I had never heard of basil salt until the authors testified that, “We use basil salt in a shaker on our counter instead of plain salt when cooking or as a table seasoning.” Basil salt is created by putting a cup of dry, compressed basil leaves into a food processor and blending them into a paste, with a little water added if necessary. You then add kosher salt and slowly blend again until both basil (green) and salt (white) flakes are visible.
Afterwards, you spread the paste on a tray and dry it in a dehydrator or on a kitchen counter with a fan. Store in an airtight jar.
Freeze drying is highlighted throughout “The Preserver’s Garden.” The authors assert that the day is rapidly approaching when a freeze dryer, whose average home versions vary in size from a large microwave to a hotel room refrigerator, will be as common as any other kitchen appliance. Its cost is still rather high, but as demand for it increases, its price is sure to be reduced. Produce that is cut up and freeze-dried can last for 25 years, as long as it is kept in a tightly sealed jar with an oxygen absorber, which is nothing more than a small packet containing iron powder and salt. Certain flowers, such as zinnias and sunflowers, can also be freeze-dried and utilized, as needed, for making wreaths and other decorative purposes.
Freeze-dried vegetables and fruits are recognizable for being crisp and crunchy — kimchi chips are made from freeze-dried cabbage — and you encounter them in trail mixes as thin slices or chunks of strawberries, bananas, apples, peaches, mangoes, and pineapples. Freeze-dried fare can make excellent snacks on its own and it can also be added to yogurt and salads. If you wish to rehydrate your raw, freeze-dried fruit or vegetable pieces for culinary purposes, cover them in cool water in a bowl and soak until soft.
The favored method presented here for preserving herbs is also freeze-drying, the reason being that “freeze-dried herbs taste like fresh herbs and are easy to crumble over your food.” Moreover, herbs preserved in this way keep their original color and essential oils, maintaining a strong flavor that is unmatched by traditional air-drying.
“The New Natural Food Garden” (Storey Publishing, 2026), by Natalie Bogwalker and Chloe Lieberman, provides all the information you will ever need to know regarding the design, planting, and care of a vegetable and herb garden. One of the interesting features is the juxtaposition of differing views on certain subjects, proving that gardening is as much of an art or a personally customized pastime as it is a science.
For instance, on the subject of vegetable seedling thinning, Natalie thins in two stages: (1) when seedlings have opened their first set of true leaves (after the cotyledons or seed leaves that enclose the embryo have opened), she separates them to one inch apart, and (2) after the second or third set of true leaves have developed, she thins to the spacing prescribed for that crop. Chloe thins only once, before seedlings are growing into each other, sometime between the first and third set of true leaves.
As for growing crops in containers, four mixes are suggested: Two consist of 60% compost with a third of this in the form of vermicompost or worm castings, one includes 45% compost, and the other just 33% compost.
Or take the subject of soil fertility. There are two broad approaches; one is based on soil mineral content, while the other is more attentive to the health of soil life in the form of aerobic bacteria and beneficial fungi, especially mycorrhizae. The authors combine both approaches, yet I am definitely more inclined towards the health of the soil ever since reading of Ruth Stout’s practice.
Stout was a legendary gardener whose only garden input other than water was rotting hay. She grew luscious, pest-free vegetables, building the healthiest soil imaginable that sustained her crops perpetually from one season to the next. To appreciate Stout’s work (or anti-work) ethic, read “The No Work Garden.”
A number of tables in this book are of inestimable value. The one that really grabs my attention is “What to do each month in a hot climate (including SoCal) garden.” The gardening tasks for the cultivation of 30 vegetables are laid out month by month. For example, among February’s instructions regarding lettuce, “direct sowing (into the ground or a raised bed), transplanting (from seedlings sprouted in pots), fertilizing” are noted while, for corn, we see “bed preparation, direct sowing” for February, which is followed by “succession sowing” in March and April so that you can harvest corn in May, June, July, and August. Muskmelons, during February, should be started from seed indoors.
California native of the week: Antelope bitterbrush (Purshia tridentata) is an anomaly since it is a member of the rose family, but has roots that behave like those of a legume. That is, they are dotted with nodules inhabited by nitrogen-fixing bacteria that obviate the need for fertilizer. This is a tough, highly ornamental plant that, for some reason, is virtually absent from the nursery trade. When in bloom, it is blanketed with fragrant, bird-attracting yellow flowers against a background of grey leaves on a shrub that can reach six feet tall. It is susceptible to browsing by antelope and deer, but is impervious to freezing weather, is highly drought-tolerant, yet will accept some water and a little shade. It may lose its leaves in the summer in response to drought, but foliage will return with rain or irrigation.
If you have any vegetable, fruit, or herb preserving experiences to share, please send them to joshua@perfectplants.com. Your questions and comments, as well as gardening conundrums and successes are always welcome.