I've been doing this for awhile. Unfortunately, our prices have not been as good and I do not have an in-ground garden (root-knot nematodes are the devil). But I like to do it to put the food up and keep my canning skills fresh. Since I am in Central Florida now, I am planning on being on the lookout for early-crop bargains or u-pick. Strawberry season is fast approaching.
Tomorrow I will finish up the last of the TG sweet potatoes and hope I can get the two bags of onions made into the sweet onion jam I see so many people on YouTube making.
About a month ago, my husband and I bought 12 mature blueberry bushes from a local farmer. They are in pots and he recommended we leave them in the pots to have better control of the soil acidity. That is how all the bushes on his farm are cultivated -- in pots with drip irrigation. The reason he was selling them was that they are early bearers and when they bear, the market is flooded with cheaper berries from Peru so he is replacing them with plants that mature at a different time. He was going to trash the plant in a burn pile but then his son said, "People will want those plants, sell them." He did and make a nice little bit of cash and we were happy to get them. If anyone in the Central florida area is interested, let me know and I will link you to his FB marketplace ad.
So each plant will bear 3-5 pounds of blueberries, so there will be plenty of berries for the grands and greats that like them. My daughter and I are planning on dehydrating and freezing some, and we are looking for recipes for blueberry syrup.
