Ah-ha. So the secret is paying attention to your garden. Water it like mad. Weed it like crazy.
Wrestle the horn worms off your tomatoes and toss them in the bay for the fish to chew on.
Then one day… after it actually rains a bit, you will stand in awe at the cukes & monster zucchini, bushels of tomatoes, herbs, lettuce & greens ambushing the yard. It’s lovely. It’s a lot!
Sure you can can. But I find it is hard to open up and use your precious little jars of what not. I have some pickled figs from at least 15 years ago. (I can’t bear to eat them-ok maybe I shouldn’t, but they still look great tucked in their syrup.) Hazel Kraft, of Frenchtown, now long gone, taught me how to make them and shared her coveted cinnamon oil!
Freezing is fine, just harvest in early morning, wash & dry well and remove any uninvited varmits. If your freezer goes down, you will have a lot of eating to do.
This year I am going to try drying. After all the sun is certainly turned up to bake. After searching through a bunch of websites, I chose a simple dryer. There are more complex, surely more efficient ones to build, but this one looks enchantingly simple. My friend Linda Croxson of Locustville, VA. keeps her dried tomatoes in a jar of olive oil.
I am a slave to them.
This was not hard to build.
but I had trouble keeping ants out, and here in Maryland with the our summer air saturated with humidity- some of my tomatoes molded.
I whined to friends and they lent me a commercial version….
which had to be plugged in so it was much less romantic.
Tomatoes sliced at about 1/4 inch wide dried in about 24 hours. Although the bottom trays dried much faster and I even managed to burn some. Some of the top trays still attracted some mold! I washed the trays and kept a sharp eye out. So I did get some. The drier I truly wanted to build is below. I collected all the materials together, except time:( well maybe next summer.
TESTS FOR DRYNESS:
Rely on appearance and feel to judge dryness.
Cool a test handful a few minutes before deciding whether the food is done.
Consider fruit dry when no wetness can be squeezed from a piece which has been cut – it should be rather tough and pliable.
Consider vegetables dry when brittle. 
STORAGE :
Ensure food is thoroughly cool before storing.
Store in small quantities in glass or food-grade plastic. Check supplies frequently for contamination or dampness. Keep in a dry, cool place (between 4 C/40 F and 21 C/70 F).
** There is much more info on line:
howtogardenadvice.com/harvesting/how_to_dehydrate_dry_vegetables.html
pickyourown.org/allaboutcanning.htm
