When the Garden Gives You More Than You Can Eat

When I planted a garden this year at Chris’ place, I was picturing fresh tomatoes off the vine, cucumbers for snacking, maybe enough to share a few bags with the neighbors. What I didn’t think through was what happens when everything decides to be ready at the same time.

This isn’t my first time canning. My mom canned a little when I was young, and I’d dabbled with it myself years later when I had a garden in the city. But this is the first time I’ve actually had to figure out how to keep up with what was coming out of the ground — not as a hobby, but because the harvest wasn’t going to wait for me to feel ready.

July started small. We were given a huge batch of corn — not from our own garden, just a gift — and I spent some time cutting it off the cob and bagging it for the freezer. A few days later, I did my first canning session of the season: a dozen jars or so, relish, pickles, corn, a little squash. It felt like a good day’s work.

Then the garden just kept going. Tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, onions — every few days there was another load on the counter. By the end of July I’d made a second batch of pickles, tried what I jokingly called a “rebel canning” batch of monkey butter, and put up several jars of salsa. I looked at about four different monkey butter recipes online, then took what I liked from each and made it my own — no pectin, just simmered down until it was right.

There was even a night where dinner was a salad with our own spinach, some cooked broccoli, and corn straight from what I’d already put up that summer. That’s the part that actually got me — eating something off our own shelf instead of the store’s.

By mid-August, I realized this wasn’t “a few jars here and there” anymore. A few weeks ago I canned close to 30 jars in a single day — jalapeños two ways (plain brine and a sweet, spicy batch I’d been wanting to try called cowboy candy), a big batch of salsa, spaghetti sauce, and red and white beans.

The beans didn’t come from the garden at all, actually. That one wasn’t about using up a harvest — it was about knowing exactly what was in our food and always having something on the shelf instead of buying canned beans at the store. Different reason, same shelf.

Looking at that counter full of jars, it hit me: I am not just preserving a harvest anymore. I am starting to build a pantry.

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A few of the recipes from this stretch, if you want to try them yourself:

• Bread and Butter Pickles
• Monkey Butter
• Cowboy Candy

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Now as August is winding down, things have slowed to something quieter — a couple of days spent caramelizing onions, low and slow, nothing urgent about it. A nice, calm close to a summer that started with a dozen jars and has ended with a pantry shelf full of food we’ve put away ourselves.

P.S. — I also cleaned and froze a big batch of tomatoes from that harvest. I didn’t have it in me to process them right then, but I couldn’t let them go to waste either — they’re sitting in the freezer, and I’ll deal with them soon.