I read this comment over at different blog, she just touched on it very briefly, in passing that she was going to plant a raised bed of something just for canning that year.. and it got me thinking about this post.

If you are really into trying to grow your own food and preserving it, that can include, drying it, freezing it, canning it or fermenting it, you have to look at the idea of not just a fresh eating garden but a well thought out and planned “Canning Garden”

If you want to grow and produce some garden products to help off-set the cost of critter feed(and with the rise in prices we are seeing on general crops) you can bet your booties that I do, that means another area that needs to be given over to gardening.

So how would you figure this out, well the first thing to do would be to figure out what your own family uses on a regular base’s, so while this might seem like a bit of work, consider having a list, and jotting down what you are using for a week, two weeks or even better a normal month..  Do you typically eat corn, or is it pea’s, do you tend to use tomato sauce for almost everything, are you a potato family or are you more into veggie stirfries..

A good example, some folks love pickles, so if you are already buying one big pickle jar per week or every two weeks, then growing and making pickles makes total sense, but if you family does not typically eat pickles, what is the point of growing, picking, cleaning and putting up 40  jars of something that is just going to sit there.

For myself, its swiss chard, I know, I know its good for you, and I love my spinach and my different greens, some spicy, some zesty, even some bitter.. hmmm so good but I don’t like Chard, I have tried different colors, kinds and different ways to cook and serve them, I almost always end up feeding it to the critters, not a bad thing, given that it grows like a weed and its really good for them.. but if I am being honest with myself, Chard should count as a) giveaway item to take to friends or b) part of the critter garden.

So think carefully about what and how much you want to plant of something, on the flip side.. we can’t seem to ever grow enough beans, Every year we plant more beans, we extend the bean growing season, the bean growing rows and still somehow despite my best efforts to grow enough beans that we can freeze a good amount.. nope.. they just get eaten.. I have seen my DH sit with a big bowl of beans and just eat them fresh as a snacks.. now this is not a bad thing, but it does not get those beans into my freezer. Going to add another 30 or 50 foot row of Canning Garden only.

So what things do I know right now that I should plan a extra couple rows for the Canning Garden.

1. Tomato’s
2. Potato’s
3. Pea’s
4. Bean’s -Green and Drying Kinds
5. Spinach
6. String Nettle
7. Peppers
8. Carrots
9. Turnips
10. Pumpkins
11. Winter Squash
12. Corn
13. Cucumbers
14. Summer Squash
15. Beets
16. Rubarb
17. Strawberries
18. Rasberries
19. Celery
20. Onions

If you were planting a Canning Garden what do you think you would need to plant extra of?