One of the best ways to ensure you don't waste an ounce of your garden this year is to preserve it using a home freeze dryer.
Save Your Garden and Your Money Using a Freeze Dryer
August and September are prime season for filling your kitchen with all of those delicious fruits and veggies you spent months growing, so why not continue to enjoy your garden all winter long by preserving it using a home freeze dryer.
5 Reasons Why You Need a Home Freeze Dryer
Nutrition
Freeze-dried foods can be stored for up to 25 years without compromising its nutritional profile, so your garden haul will be just as healthy for you as the day on which it was preserved. Amazingly, when you freeze dry food, it loses only a nominal amount of its precious nutrients, minerals and vitamins and it's the only method of food preservation that does not affect the flavour, colour or shape of your food. For these reasons, freeze drying is hands down one of the best methods of food preservation.
Money
You can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars on your yearly grocery bill by preserving your garden using a freeze dryer. With the rising cost of food in grocery stores, freeze drying fruits and vegetables from your own garden is economical, especially when you consider freeze-dried food can be stored up to 25 years. It also means you can take advantage of a bumper crop year and bulk sales by preserving it.
Reduce Food Waste
In an average year, a family of four could easily save 2 to 4 months worth of food that may have otherwise landed itself in the trash. Having a freeze dryer at home will enable you to reduce the amount of food you're throwing away and that puts money back into your pocket, not the trash bin.
Protect the Environment
Rotting food produces methane, which is a greenhouse gas that has a negative impact on the earth's climate and temperature. It is largely responsible for climate change and in North America alone, food waste amounts to about 193 million tons of greenhouse gas. That's equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions that 41 million cars would produce over an entire year if driven continuously.
Convenience
What sets freeze drying apart from other methods of food preservation is that virtually any food can be freeze dried and once treated, it's shelf-stable and can be stored at room temperature up to 25 years. The food itself requires little to no preparation before freeze drying and once processed, it'll be very light in weight since the water is removed, and the food can be reconstituted easily using water or eaten in its freeze-dried state.
Recommended reading: The essentials of freeze drying