"Ted Mittelstaedt" wrote in message
...


Green vegetables really suck when canned, they turn to mush, and
a lot of the urban gardens don't let you put in cane berry crops or other
fruit crops like fruit trees, so what you can get out of an urban garden
isn't that useful for canning. And eventually you get sick of eating
tomatoes or derivative foods. And unless you can and put up enough
food to last for the year, home preserving becomes just a seasonal
thing.

I canned some green beans in 2005 and 2006 because I wanted to enter them in
the county fair. I wouldn't go so far as to say they sucked, but canning
isn't the best way to preserve them.

I'll take exception to what you say about the produce from urban gardens not
being that useful for canning. Tomatoes can very nicely and, more
importantly, can be the base for killer home preserved salsa. Then there's
pickles -- not just cucumbers, but dilly beans. And zucchini (the hardest
part of growing which is getting rid of the ones you don't want to eat,
freeze or pickle -- I swear you can stand and watch the zucchini fruits get
larger).

Carrots and cauliflower pickle nicely, too. One year I cut zucchini and
carrots into stips the right size to stand up in half-pint jars, and pickled
them. I nestled in a clove of garlic and a sprig of oregano, on the outside
where you could see them. Made a very pretty presentation, and the pickles
were yummy, too.

Anny