I par boiled some French beans for the freezer and I've tried sun drying tomatoes in the past. You need a decent fruit dryer ( a cased in unit with a glass roof here) or the wasps, flies and anything else that fancies a snack gets them. You could of course go the Sicilian route and let grandma sit outside with a fly swat turning the tomatoes on a rack.Too true! @perchie.girl has a thread on canning and home preserving that's got a lot of good info on it (in case you haven't seen it). If August turns out as you expect, I imagine drying would be an option for at least some of this year's crop... that's never an option here, and I adore sun-dried tomatoes...oh wait - I think you said the toms had been a disaster there this year, so
to that suggestion!
We would need at least 2 large freezers, a medium sized room with good ventilation for the potatoes, beans, onions, garlic, chilli and mushrooms.
Then there's the figs and the nuts......
We produced a lot of stuff one year and what was needed was a proper canning process. It's not going to happen here.
