Blanching stops the decomposition. It helps preserve flavor, color and nutrients.
Check out the site linked below for more info. It's a great place to learn exactly what you need to do for each type of fruit or veggie for canning, freezing or drying.

Danna

Here is a link that might be useful: National Center for Home Food Preservation

It also halts the enzymes and helps the vegetable stay together once frozen. A good example of something that is not blanched is broccoli flowerettes. If they are simply frozen all the green buds on the crowns will end up like sawdust in the freezer bags. If blanched, the natural breaking off of the buds is lower. Some veggies don't need a blanch, like sweet peppers which are quite high in water, as well as tomatoes. If you also search here for the word BLANCH it will bring up a lot of threads.

Here is a link that might be useful: Simple BLANCH search

If you will let us know the specific veggies we may be able to provide some individual tips on them. ;) Otherwise the link Deanna gave you covers all the basics.

Corn on the cob is one of those where blanching vs. not blanching is debated by some and some veggies can be steam blanched better than water blanched.

Dave

When I freeze corn, its removed from the cobs as they just take up too much room in te freezer. I do blanch corn for about 3 minutes, and then cut the kernals off the cobs and freeze those. Done after just picking will give the best and freshest taste.

I have a wide variety of beans/peas....purple hull, various snaps, lima.....
I didn't know if the squash, zucchini, and eggplants were things that froze well or not?
I do also have several varieties of corn that I will be planting...oh, and some peppers....okra.....
I have a ton of tomatoes too, but I think they will probably become sauce before they are frozen :-)
Thanks for the helpful info and links...I'm gonna check them out now :-)

Careful with corn planting. There are a few hybrid types, SA, SH and SH2. If these hybrids are planted next to each other or with regular corn, you will not get a good usable yield. accidentially mixed a regular with an SH and all the ears were short stuby and only had maybe 2 inches of usable kernals. Summer squash, zuccini, and eggplant are watery and do not freeze well as they just turn to mush when thawed. You could dry them or just make something using them and then pressure can or freeze the recipe. Limas will need about 90 days to fully mature. I use an innoculent for all beans and peas. It improves yields by making more nitrogen available for the roots. Snow peas are good too. I prefer bush beans of the yellow waxed type. They are heavy yielding plants and out of about 12 plants I picked about 6 gallon bags of them for the freezer.

I didn't know if the squash, zucchini, and eggplants were things that froze well or not?

Those 3 seem to freeze best as part of a cooked dish rather than by themselves. They tend to go mushy when thawed. But there are several past discussions here on all 3 with recipes and freezing tips included.

Preserving Eggplant

How to save summer squash and zucchini?

101 things to make with summer squash and zucchini

Dave