By Julie Chai, Sunset associate garden editor

Canning and Preserving Your Own Harvest by Carla Emery and Lorene Edwards Forkner is one of my favorite garden-related books to come out this year. Those of who grow our own food tend to get more than a little excited when shopping for new crops each year, and we usually plant more than we have space for because we've been seduced by new, cool varieties. So by the end of the season, we're overloaded with produce (not a bad problem to have, I know)—and this book tells us what to do with it. It's got instructions on canning, freezing, drying, and storing roots, and also includes a collection of recipes.