Obviously, i love to garden. But it does take time, effort and planning. At this time of year things are ready to be harvested, other things are finished so need to be pulled so new crops can take their place. You need to fertilize crops, weed, prune, weed, plant, weed, weed, weed, weed, well, you get the idea. I grow a lot of food, not just to enjoy now, but so i can have organic vegetables during the winter as well. Preserving your garden harvest takes time as well, which is in very short supply at the moment. However, you will be so glad you took that time this winter, when you take out some of your own grown kale, or beet greens, tomatoes, or chard to make a meal. The photo is of my shelling peas, i freeze my peas, as well as chard, kale, collard, beet greens, as well as pestos of all kinds. Vegetables need to be blanched before they are frozen. Even after you harvest your vegetables, enzyme action is still occurring within the fruit or leaf. This will break down the cell structure and make the vegetable less and less tasty as time goes on. To stop this action you blanch them. All this means is putting your washed vegetables in boiling water for a certain amount of time. For shelling peas (shown above) it only takes 1 1/2 minutes. Then you drain the peas, and either put them in ice water, or run cold water over them for the same amount of time you blanched them. Drain again, put in a plastic bag and vacuum seal it. Mark it with what the vegetable is and the date, that's it! Kale and chard take 3 minutes, collard 4. A good guide to how long to blanch vegetables can be seen at  http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/freeze/blanching.html   Yesterday I cut up the last of my garlic scapes and made pesto. Then i shelled peas, and blanched and froze shelling peas and sweet snaps. I also washed and blanched kale, chard and beet greens and froze those as well. I'll be really happy i did that this winter.