While i will obviously still be buying massive amounts of my food from the grocery store, I've been considering getting into gardening to cheapen my food bill as well as grow some produce that i find tastes far better than store bought, like potatoes.
with this is mind, i will likely be getting more than i can eat within a reasonable amount of time, and yes, I'm aware normal gardens do not produce much but I am taking this to an extreme.
further more, I'll likely be buying a lot of fruit when it goes on sale or is about harvest time and they drop the price
with all this in mind, my main question is, do any of you use deep freezers or dehydrators? as far as i can tell, the vast majority of food preservation from something like a garden will instantly fall into the dehydrator method due to freezers making them mushy
i assume most dehydrates things will more often than not end up in a soup ass opposed to a proper garnish or visual element in food
deep freezers are more so for meat, but do any of you use a dehydrator and if so what for?
Anonymous · 2026-07-06 23:42 [#4860][report] >>22901 Never used a dehydrator personally. Most of my preservation is in the form of jarring. You can make jam from fruits, pickles from all sorts of stuff. You can jar tomatoes whole or pureed, or as sauce. If you want to jar low acidity vegetables like carrots, you might need a pressure canner.
Anonymous · 2026-07-06 23:55 [#4861][report] >>22902 >You can make jam from fruits this is another avenue that i didn't consider for fruit when it comes to fruit, i'll likley either just dehydrate it for eating it straight or jar it for use in greek yogurt
glad u came here, thanks anon
Anonymous · 2026-07-06 23:56 [#4862][report] >>22903 Frozen fruit is also okay for eating it with yogurt or making smoothies and stuff. I mean that's why people buy frozen fruit.
Anonymous · 2026-07-07 14:28 [#4986][report] >>22901 >but do any of you use a dehydrator and if so what for? i don't think dehydrators are very practical. the only useful thing i can think of is grinding your dried vegetables to make seasoning powder. it would be better for you to learn how to pickling or canning so your vegetables are ready to eat faster. if you want to do a bunch of experimentation, then you can try to pickle your vegetables with calcium salts to keep them crunchy
Anonymous · 2026-07-07 21:12 [#5123][report] >>22901 >I'll likely be buying a lot of fruit when it goes on sale On sale? You must not like fresh fruit.
Anonymous · 2026-07-07 21:13 [#5124][report] >>22901 Based on how you talk I would say you are far too stupid and uneducated to take on gardening.
Anonymous · 2026-07-09 02:10 [#5522][report] I have a dehydrator I use a few times a year, but would like to use it more.
My favorite thing to dehydrate is over-ripe bannanas. Once dehydrated they're delicious, like candy, I prefer bannanas dehydrated more than fresh!
My second most successful use of the dehydrator are home-grown elderberries (picrel), which I then use in tea all year round. (Mint is another super easy thing to grow & dehydrate for tea.)
My next favorite thing to dehydrate is hot peppers from the garden. Perfect way to preserve them for making homemade hotsauce throughout the year.
Other than that I only really use it to dehydrate fruit I have in excess that is going to go bad if I don't do something with it right away.
It's supposed to be good for making jerky too but I've never gotten around to trying that out.
Anonymous · 2026-07-09 05:59 [#5632][report] [deleted by 4chan - preserved by Cyberix]
>>22901 Cramming is a great way to store and preserve food
Anonymous · 2026-07-09 07:35 [#5642][report] >>22901 My mom uses a dehydrator in order to make dried figs, this year she is making dried apricots. We usually put them in freezer just to be safe. I also dried a lot of mint for tea last year. As one anon said you can jar things, just make sure that it's pasteurized since even jarred food can go bad. If you want to grow any root vegetables they can be stored pretty easily, just keep potatoes, turnips, beet covered in a dry cold space. Onions and garlic we usually place in a drafty place, we still lose some onions. There is also other methods of food preservation, salting, smoking or if you are feeling adventures you could try to perseve meat in lard.
Anonymous · 2026-07-09 15:37 [#5805][report] >>22909 I only cram marshmallows
Anonymous · 2026-07-09 16:03 [#5818][report] >>22901 i have a dehydrator for beef jerky. buy a proper one from a restraurant supply store. they work much better than those shitty plastic stacks. jerky savings pays it off after 2 or 3 batches. great for mushrooms. i do fruit sometimes and can do all sorts of other stuff like eggs and pasta and soups but its tough to beat the price of mass produced products so thats more about quality and avoiding preservatives.
Anonymous · 2026-07-10 07:06 [#6218][report] >>22901 I see gardening more as a hobby, don't think it will reduce your food bill due to crop-yield material cost depending on where you live
Anonymous · 2026-07-10 11:54 [#6292][report] [deleted by 4chan - preserved by Cyberix]
It's almost never worth preserving home produce. Bitter pill.
Focus on growing herbs, flowers, more dedicate produce and things like chillies which you can pick one by one.
Anonymous · 2026-07-10 12:07 [#6295][report] >>22901 >and yes, I'm aware normal gardens do not produce much but I am taking this to an extreme. the current extreme you're at is not having a garden at all. One day you might get to the point that you have enough rotating produce to feed one person perpetually, but that's a long long long way off if it ever happens. Do what the other anon suggested as a start and focus on herbs. They are small, easy to manage, and can be grown indoors so your local environment and pests are not much of a roadblock as you're learning. And until you're experienced and good at gardening, the general produce you make will be a lot worse than a decent grocery store's, but something like dill or basil freshly picked will always be better than the wilting shit in store containers.
Anonymous · 2026-07-10 14:00 [#6389][report] >>22915 Peppers are also extremely easy if you like them
Anonymous · 2026-07-10 14:20 [#6400][report] >>22916 >>22915 don't go for tomatoes or mint outside of a pot though, they WILL try to take over your garden and choke out everything else
Anonymous · 2026-07-10 14:47 [#6408][report] >>22917 Tomatoes are also hard mode in a way fighting off birds and bugs for a newbie
Anonymous · 2026-07-10 14:51 [#6411][report] >>22914 >It's almost never worth preserving home produce. Bitter pill. Based on what? The multiple generations that canned, jarred, and preserved everything possible? Based on methods easily done by anyone with $40?
Is this a case of you not knowing how to make jams and jellies at home so you suggest its just not worth doing because you can buy some corn syrup garbage at walmart for $3?
Anonymous · 2026-07-10 15:43 [#6434][report] >>22908 >My next favorite thing to dehydrate is hot peppers from the garden you don't need to put it into a dehydrator if it's small peppers. i lay out my cayenne peppers out to dry in the air and they don't get rotten
Anonymous · 2026-07-11 04:41 [#7000][report] >>22918 Birds went crazy for my blueberries. When I was monitoring constantly out the window I’d chase them away over a 20 times a day. So annoying I cut off the rest of the unripe berries to give the bushes more growing time for next year when I’ll hopefully build an enclosure
>>22919 Cute cat, it isn’t bothered at all by the smell of dill?
Anonymous · 2026-07-12 19:23 [#8601][report] >>22921 >Cute cat, it isn’t bothered at all by the smell of dill? Thanks, and I wasn't aware cats disliked the smell.
Anonymous · 2026-07-12 20:16 [#8652][report] I made some jam out of a bunch of strawberries I got for 4th of July that no one ate. Tbh it was a huge pain in the ass because you have to constantly stir while it cooks.
Anonymous · 2026-07-13 05:27 [#8821][report] >>22922 I’m in the wrong, I assumed they wouldn’t like dill but I looked it up and apparently they don’t dislike it.