Thanks. It's good advice. As you know there's many variables, including time, and all those unforeseen hazards. At times, I think I knew the weather forecast better than the weather stations did. Everything from bad seeds, to the weather, to birds, to...... and of course the latitude and elevation, and more play a factor to these variables. I've done what you wrote in the past. For the avg. individual who works in an office and away from home, having a wife and kids, time is a limiting factor too.

I've grown veggies all the way into January covering the plants at night with plastic sheeting and had to be always vigilant of the temperature. Making use of clear plastic and assuring the plastic never touched the plants, and brushing the snow off when it required was all very memorable. All of this in my opinion, doesn't really compare to the work of harvesting, preparing, and preserving those vegetables. Blanching of tomatoes, peeling the skins off them to can them, picking all of those small cucumbers, washing them, sterilizing, having ample apple vinegar, and assuring the 'right' amount of ingredients for all the pickling batches, etc. is a lot of work! Then there is assuring having adequate space to store them.

I had raspberry plants that were very 'invasive' and easily escaped their confines, but man did they ever produce. Almost every day, I picked those berries and harvested them by washing them and putting them in freezer bag, after freezer bag, and having to do this every week in the summer. There were two productive cycles in the summer for these. I'd easily get 15 freezer bags full of raspberries each year. From those I'd make the best jam anywhere. I had a strawberry garden as well. I'd make strawberry jam. I'd add just enough lemon juice to bring out the flavor of those strawberries. The kids love it. Neighbors would ask me for my recipe. I'd oblige them and would give it to them, but they never used it because buying it from a grocery store was more convenient for them. The same was true when I had too much of a vegetable coming in at once. I'd give the neighbors the surplus as an act of kindness. I could have easily just let it all rot and throw it away, but that's not how I think. Not once was the favor ever returned in all the years I lived there. There was a mulberry tree that grew in back of my yard. I use to get several freezer bags full of mulberries too. The way I looked at it. if I didn't pick those mulberries, the birds would and they'd get drunk on them. A couple times birds flew into my glass window and bounced off. I was helping those little fellows out by picking all those mulberries. I'd put out bird seed feeders and had several bird houses all around the house. I made mulberry jam as well. With the frozen bags of raspberries, strawberries, and mulberries, I use to make smoothies. My wife and kids loved these smoothies for a while, but their tastes changed and at soon fell out of fashion. We use to make pancakes using these as well.

There's more, but I mainly ran the entire show. It's great to have help when you're trying to bypass the need for corporate big top grocery stores.