The Penny Pantry multi tasks when it comes to building a large pantry for pennies! You can build a nice pantry stockpile using coupons at the grocery store, but I believe to really build a pantry for pennies, you need to utilize a garden and canning! You can really cut your grocery bill by incorporating gardening and home canning into your money saving plans. Not only that but you will be learning skills that will help you sustain your pantry despite the grocery store!
Even if you do not have a large garden area, there are plenty of ways to utilize a summer garden even if it is a small back yard garden or a container garden on the back porch. Start planning now for your summer garden!
Here is an old fashioned pantry idea from grandmother:
Green Beans In The Garden!
I’ll start with green beans! Wow, I love green beans. I had great success with planting green beans last year. I planted a bush bean that ended up being very prolific. This year will be planting both bush beans and pole beans. I have had so many women ask me how many plants I planted and how many green beans did those plants produce. I didn’t keep those stats but intend on keeping up with more stats this year on what we plant and what it produces. I planted them Ruth Stout style and used the hay mulch garden method, so I didn’t count the amount of seeds we planted.
This was the first year that I canned green beans. At first, the idea of pressure canning my own food scared me. I had a good friend who was an experienced at canning assure me it wasn’t as difficult as it looked. My sister-in-law also got into canning and did an amazing job cutting her grocery bill buying bulk food from an Amish Produce Auction in our area and then bringing it home and canning it! My canning experience last year was amazing. I learned so much and saw amazing results with filling my pantry with good garden produce for a fraction of the cost of buying it store bought. Not only that, but the taste and quality of the food has been amazing!
This year I will be doubling my green bean planting efforts and canning at least twice the amount that I canned last year. My goal is to can enough green beans to last me through the entire year! I’m still trying to figure out how many quarts that is going to be!
Here are detailed instructions with pictures on How To Can Green Beans!
Here is a handy chart on how much of a fruit or vegetable makes how many pints or quarts.
How has canning saved you money? built your pantry stores?
We trellised two rows (35′ long) of pole beans last year (more like 1 3/4 because there were a couple cucumber plants at the end) and ended up freezing 60 pounds of beans! Not bad for $2.10 worth of seed!
It’s just a shame that we’re not to fond of the variety-Kentucky Wonder- but a bit of butter, salt, and pepper makes them better. We’re going to try the Blue Lake pole variety this year instead.