How to Enjoy Summer Garden Vegetables Year Round

Everybody loves some fresh garden vegetables during the summer, but when fall hits, it can be tough to cope with the loss of these foods. From delicious salads to fresh herbs, zucchini, squash, and peppers, garden harvest is a fun time to enjoy the best of the healthy vegetables. Below are some ways to keep your summer garden harvest to eat for the rest of the year.

Summer Garden Vegetables: Homemade Sundried Tomatoes

When tomato plants start producing tomatoes, it can be tough to keep up with them, short of eating bowls full of tomatoes with a little salad dressing on them (which is not necessarily a bad thing). However, it is really easy to make your own sundried tomatoes to eat during the winter months when you'll be longing for that fresh garden tomato.

To make your own sundried tomatoes at home, wait until you have a large batch of ripe tomatoes, and chop them all into small pieces (ideally about 1/2 inch cubed, although they can be bigger if you don't have the patience). Throw away all the seeds and gooey middles, as those take forever to dry, and put the good parts into a large bowl. Toss them with some olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, and basil. Lay them all out on large baking sheets, just one layer, ideally with a little space between them, and put them in an oven set to a low temperature (250 or below).

They will take a few hours, but turn them every hour or so, and watch carefully because once they start to burn, they go quickly. After they cool, your homemade sundried tomatoes can be frozen in small bags to be taken out and used all winter.

Summer Garden Vegetables: Frozen Herb Cubes

If you are puzzled as to how to use all your fresh herbs in the summer months, you should consider freezing them for use during the winter as well. It is really easy, and you can either freeze each type of herb individually, or you can put together basil and oregano for an Italian herb blend, or rosemary, sage, and thyme for a poultry blend.

To freeze your herbs, I recommend putting them in a blender with a small amount of water, and blending on pulse until they are chopped. Then you can spoon the mixture into ice cube trays. When they are frozen, move them into ziplock bags, and you have herb cubes that are the perfect size for seasoning one dish.

Summer Garden Vegetables: Yellow Squash Pickles

If you are the pickle type, you can consider canning some yellow squash pickles, which hare very easy to make with your fresh garden squash, and are a great side to just about any meal.

To make the yellow squash pickles, just slice the squash thinly and mix it in a large bowl with chopped onion, peppers, and a tablespoon of salt for every cup of squash. Cover the mixture with water, let it sit for a few hours, and drain off the liquid.

Then mix together equal amounts of vinegar and sugar (each about 1/4 the volume of the squash you used) and bring them to a boil with a little bit of mustard seeds and celery seeds. Add the squash, boil for a few minutes, and then pour it into canning jars.