Hey there, I hope you're having a great January. I know January seems like the longest month of the year, at least it does for me.

But I do hope in some way adding my Friday episodes this month have inspired you and are helping you to be able to get through this long month.

Today we're going to be talking about how to plan your garden for seasonal eating.

And I thought, you know, it's a really good time to be talking about this because in January,

most of us are probably not harvesting a whole lot out of our garden. Maybe you're covered in

snow and so you're not harvesting anything. Maybe you're in the South and you're harvesting more than most people,

but January isn't necessarily a month that's known for fresh fruits and vegetables from the garden, right?

Well, if you've listened to this podcast for any length of time, you know that I've talked a lot about preserving.

And I've talked a lot about planning for preserving. The reason for

this is because that was a huge focus for me, well, it still is, but it definitely was a huge

focus for me as I began my first garden and as I began trying to do everything I could

to grow as much as I could and preserve as much as I could. That way, not only could

I have some fresh food in the middle of the growing season, but I could also have food put up for the

off season, like January, when not everything is coming out of the garden. But maybe you don't want to do all that work of preserving. I hear that

a lot, especially from new gardeners or maybe gardeners that just don't have a lot of time,

or maybe you don't have a lot of space and you don't think you're going to have enough to preserve.

I totally get that. Or maybe you just want to focus on fresh eating. That's why you grow a garden and that's

what means the most to you. I have to be honest, focusing on growing for fresh eating in my garden

was not something I focused on initially. But now I'm leaning into it more and more, and I'm absolutely loving it.

I hate to admit that there was a time that I would harvest something out of my garden,

and I would not cook it or eat it fresh because I thought, I need to preserve this instead.

And now I just shake my head thinking, it's going to be the best when it's fresh.

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