What did you do in the garden today?

[TJAnonymous]

DON"T touch them for 24 hours. If they aren't totally sealed now and you loosen a seal, the change in pressure will shower you in scalding liquid!!!! Siphoning is normal. as long as there is more than 60% of your contents are still there and the jar is sealed, you're good.

So is the liquid sputtering from the ring after being removed from the canner just siphoning? Does it mean that the lid didn't seal? If the pop top is depressed, it means that the lid sealed....right?

 

[WthrLady]

Yes, sputtering is siphoning.
After the canner is done and comes down to pressure on it's own, I still let the jars sit in there for an hour or so.... seals seem to work much better for me that way.
Button down means it is sealed. Yes.
If you tap the top of a jar that has sealed it sounds tinny as compared to one that hasn't it sounds thuddy.

 

[Wee Farmer Sarah]

OK, getting the canning pressure to stabilize on a ceramic cooktop absolutely SUCKS. Mine keeps yo-yo-ing between 10 and 13. And every time it drops below 11, I gotta tack on more time. Kind of afraid of what my chicken is going to look like once this is done. And it's taking so long that I won't have time to do the broth tonight.

The problem with pressure canning on flat top stoves is because of the way the burners work. The heat on the glass top models is more oscillating and that makes it more difficult to maintain the heat to keep the pressure steady. I replaced my glass top stove with a GE coil burner with sensors that provide a more steady constant heat. Hopefully you can finish safely canning your broth.

 

[Wee Farmer Sarah]

After the jars sit for a while in the canner remove them and put them on a towel or a rack then don’t touch the jars for several hours. I give mine 12 to 24 hours before removing the rings.

 

[Ascholten]

This can be a bit messy but one method to even out the oscillating of the IR stoves is to put a thermal mass down. I used to put a ring down around it and fill it with sand, and then set the pot down in that. This way it'd do it's goofy crap into the sand which would eventually heat up and send the heat to the pot snugged down into it and that would keep the temps even. With that though, once the pot gets heated up to temp, don't be in such a hurry to throw the stuff into the water, let it roll for 20 minutes or so, get it good and ... as stable as it is going to get, and let the stove settle out and everything get whatever passes for happy, then put your jars in. If they are breathing, hmm out of the cooker, that can suck bad stuff into them, turn the heat off, let them sit in there until after it stops boiling, in worse case, then if they panted, it was scalding sanitized. Try to avoid that, as one piece of solid between the lid and jar lip and it won't seal right and that's a wasted jar of food. Once the pot has stopped boiling the jars should stop panting very soon after, wait about 5 minutes after the pressure in the cooker has settled down to normal, (meaning it's no longer boiling, which means your panting should have stopped) then you can take them out and gently set them wherever, being careful not to set them on a cold counter etc that could shock crack them for their final cooling and then put away.

Aaron

 

[Sueby]

The canning lids were a different story. I remember some of you were having trouble with some of the Ball lids. I reused some old lids but also bought some new lids. I don't know if the troublesome ones were new or old.

I experimented when I did broth last week - only the old lids failed on me (& just old, not re-used - I don't re-use them). The new ball sure tight lids all sealed. The old lids were given to me from a neighbor though so in reality they could have been years & years old. But I was happy all the new lids sealed.

I noticed after I opened the canner lid that some of the pint lid centers were repeatedly "popping" up and down and there was liquid spontaneously sputtering from around the rings. Used the tongs to take them out and set them on a towel on the counter. Sputtering continued for a few minutes but eventually stopped. All the jars are now cooled and seem like the tops are sealed but I'm not sure. Any suggestions on how to check? Should I even trust the ones that were sputtering liquid from the rings after they were removed from the canner?

I posted a video of that a couple years ago here - it was funny! The jar did seal fine in the end. I do believe I over filled my jars a bit that time, I make sure I no longer do that & I haven't had any siphoning since (no clue if that had anything to do with the popping tho). I was guessing on an inch headspace & I was wrong, lol. It was more like 3/4. Got that down now.

 

[WIchickMama]

I am starting to plan out gardens for next year. I will then make a seed order, I hope in the next few weeks so that I can get what I need with hopefully still decent prices. And then in Jan I will pre-order some fruit trees and such. I am also seriously looking at greenhouse plans for spring which I can then use next fall and forward.

 

[vall]

My new compost bin arrived. It's huge! Supposed to hold almost a yard. I didn't even expand it all the way and it's only halfway full with what was in the square bin. Not quite as cheap as pallets but easy to set up and move.

Picked my first tomato of the year, I think this is prairie fire - tasty!

5.5 inches of rain since Sunday and it's not done yet. It's finally time for soup, I made pickle soup yesterday and quail soup today.

 

[Ascholten]

I experimented when I did broth last week - only the old lids failed on me (& just old, not re-used - I don't re-use them). The new ball sure tight lids all sealed. The old lids were given to me from a neighbor though so in reality they could have been years & years old. But I was happy all the new lids sealed.

I posted a video of that a couple years ago here - it was funny! The jar did seal fine in the end. I do believe I over filled my jars a bit that time, I make sure I no longer do that & I haven't had any siphoning since (no clue if that had anything to do with the popping tho). I was guessing on an inch headspace & I was wrong, lol. It was more like 3/4. Got that down now.

When water boils, it will expand 1580 times it's size. at a very minimum With those jars closed, it has to go somewhere, so it pops and fills the little void with the steam, hence you hear the lid popping up from the bit of pressure it created under them. If you look closely every time the lid pops up you seen a bubble run up to the surface immediately before that event. That steam then cools back down to water, immediately contracts, creating a vaccuum under the lid, and it sucks back down. Given the jar is right @t the boiling point, small amounts will flash in and out as residual heat enters from the pot it's in, and leaves due to the lid being off and natural cooling.

The thing here, every time it sucks in, it has a chance of sucking air in from the outside too, air that can have mold spores and everything else in it, hence giving it a perfect night cozy, place to grow. Leaving them in the pot, with the lid on, does not have to be sealed tight, but on, keeps the entire area surrounding it, hot, YES it takes longer to cool down but the entire surrounding is sterile now, because it's close to boiling temp, so any air that did manage to suck in, has nothing living in it. Eventually the lid sits on the jar, it sucks in, cools, so it sucks a little harder, and seals, then you tighten the screw cap and it's sealed for good now. You do NOT want to leave too big of an air gap on the top because too big of a gap, means when it cools back down to water, there was so much more to condense, so .. so much more room to fill with... something...so itsucks a lot harder. That 'seal' is only good for 5 or 6 inches of vaccuum. If you go pulling say 13 inches because of the excess gap, it WILL suck air in from outside. If this air was in a hot pot, no big deal, if this air was from your countertop area because the jar was taken out, and its cool air, it could be an issue.

Aaron

 

[Badchickenpun]

Yes, sputtering is siphoning.
After the canner is done and comes down to pressure on it's own, I still let the jars sit in there for an hour or so.... seals seem to work much better for me that way.
Button down means it is sealed. Yes.
If you tap the top of a jar that has sealed it sounds tinny as compared to one that hasn't it sounds thuddy.

I did applesauce for the first time this fall. I think they leaked a bit after I go them out of the canner, I think, i noticed the outside of the jars a bit sticky the next day... But the seal seems great. I left an inch of clearance, but now the applesauce is touching the lid and there is an inch or so of liquid at the bottom of the jar.
I hope they are ok.