What did you do in the garden today?

[jawilliams509]

Everyone here probably knows... Broth must be pressure canned.

Just in case someone who doesn't know reads this... my conscience dictates I have to say it.

Yes! Finishing up in the pressure canner now.

 

[Nomadicus]

Bought my wife a brand new 14qt jar capacity deluxe canner that has never been used. We normally pressure can everything. Even tomatoes.

 

[Burnt Brass Homestead]

My neighbor loves that attatchment, said it was worth the cost of the machine. Mine didn't work, and we only used it twice before it stopped working. VERY disappointed. It wasn't cheap.

I love the attachment but be careful when vacuum sealing fine substances like flour, spices, baking soda, and powdery stuff as it can go up the tube and mess up the machine.

 

[WthrLady]

Bought my wife a brand new 14qt jar capacity deluxe canner that has never been used. We normally pressure can everything. Even tomatoes.

Me too. Only exception is jam and jelly. I water bath those still.

 

[Smokerbill]

I checked on my crop of wild Oregon grapes down in the woods this morning and they are still a bit unripe, I think. I'm pretty sure I'll make syrup with them when it's time to pick them. They are definitely one of the most sour berries I've tasted. Must have a lot of vitamin C in them.

 

[CedarLane]

I'd heard some people say you can can non-uniform jars too like old pace sauce jars. And stuff you wouldn't normally think of using, like recycling glass jars from stores. Is that part true though? I'd wanted to find real references to confirm.

I personally only/mostly use "canning" jars, but I know many who successfully can with older mayo/etc. jars. I specify "older" because most of the newer jars are made thinner and the lid size is different. The (very) few non-mason jars that I do use are older/heavier, and I only use them for water bath or steam canning and never in the pressure canner.

Theoretically, you probably can use at least some of them safely.

Practically, it just isn't worth it. The real thing will last many decades so cost almost nothing even if bought new with the current prices.

Then there are efficiencies like the canners and racks in the canners being sized for standard canning jars, uniform lids and rings, jar lifters fitting well ...

Important point...some jars are different shapes and then 7 quarts will not fit in the canner as usual.

Canning stuff doesn't last at Goodwill stores around here. My neighbor goes to a lot of estate sales, though, and she said she can find a fair amount of canning supplies. She doesn't need any of it, but she'll buy it for friends and neighbors who are looking for them.

I'm often surprised at what Goodwill & Salvation Army, etc. will charge for canning jars...sometimes new price! Why?
I also will buy canning supplies if I see them at a good price. Even if I don't need them myself, I know others who can use them!

Many of the resale shops and estate sales charge more than they are new. Sometimes they don't; it is worth checking. Farm auction sales have been good sources.

True

I will not use jars that are not meant for canning to can with. Like old salsa jars or something. The seals are not meant to be reused. I'm a stickler when it comes to safely canning, I don't need anyone getting sick. I have a huge stash of real canning jars & I always use new lids, I do not ever reuse them. Could it work, probably - but is it worth it?

Many of the older ones were intended to be reused (before we became a "throw away" society. Like I said above, I have a very select few that I do use for water bath or steam canning, but not pressure canning. However, I know some who regularly can with the old mayo jars and have had not issues with them. (They gladly took the ones I was cleaning out of my supply) I do think there is a different in quality, thickness of jars, etc from years gone by and jars produced now (We see this in the difference of quality in the Ball lids...for years I thought of Ball was the standard of quality.)

Dear Wife got sick a number of years ago and that put an end to our canning. She was just not up to the task. We gave away all our jars and lids to a cousin who was still canning back then. Dear Wife is better now, but today we only freeze stuff. We have 2 freezers but only have one in use at present. With only 2 people in the house, our challenge is to eat the food before it goes bad. We need to do better at food management.

I freeze a lot too, but lately have been trying to can more of it. I stress out every time we have a power outage. I've been thinking about this for awhile and then.....our basement refrigerator/freezer tripped. Unfortunately, we didn't realize it for 2 weeks. Thankfully there wasn't much in the fridge right then, but the freezer was full. Sadly, we lost a whole bucket of ice cream, a 2 quart container of apple cider, some applesauce and much more. I think I'll feel better if I put as much as possible in canning jars rather than the freezers in the future. I'm glad this was only a refrigerator freezer and not one of my big freezers!

Everyone here probably knows... Broth must be pressure canned.

Just in case someone who doesn't know reads this... my conscience dictates I have to say it.

and meat and vegetables, etc. I get so nervous when people talk about water bathing for 3 hours the way their mothers and grandmothers did. We've learned so much more about safety since those days!

 

[WthrLady]

4 quarts simmered down from 6qts of puree in the canner
Phew.
The countertop is full again, so again on Saturday.
I did manage to get copper on the tomatoes this evening.
The cutworms have found the onion tops. I think they're ready anyway, so I'll fork them out soon.

 

[MotherofOrpies]

I am 40 pages behind visiting my 81 year old aunt and the internet is bad, will be back home on Sunday
My brother in law gave me some zucchini, wow, are they big!! I never had any luck with them ( leaves turned white, fruit just fell off after a few days) I didn’t plant any this year

 

[littledog]

I tried fermenting zucchini sticks last summer to make pickles. It didn't work out. I attempted natural fermentation, using just salt water that I mixed to what I read was the correct concentration of salt/water.

I'm going to try again this year, too, hopefully with better results. I guess beans can be pickled, can't they?

I tried making pickled zucchini last year, using the same recipe as sliced cuke pickles. They came out so salty they were inedible, maybe they tend to absorb more of the brine? No clue.

Last year I made sweet-and-sour beans from a recipe for "sweet-and-sour pickles" out of the old "Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook" from the 60's that I inherited from my grandmother. Really delicious, and a good way to use up the bigger, older beans that I didn't harvest fast enough.

Holey Moley! I just drive mine in until the steel plate at the bottom is buried a few inches. I kind of plan on things being temporary, so I make them easy to pull out.

It depends on the soil where you live, too (we live not too far from you, where the soil tends to be wet, in normal years.) Back when I lived up on the hill, the soil was rocky and gravelly, and as long as I chose the right place to not hit a big rock, I could drive them in a foot or so and they would stay stable even after stretching wire fence around them. And I could do the "wiggle them in all directions" method to pull them up. Where we live now, it's near a river with a couple feet of silt and clay then gravel below that, so we have to drive them down about 3 feet to hope they won't move. After a few years, the posts of my clothesline are leaning towards each other, even though I concreted them in! Just because the soil is made of only tiny particles.

And sometimes I don't paying a little more at the local store, because if they don't get business, they could shut down. It's worth it to have a hardware store a mile away from my house. And it's cheaper to pay more locally than to drive 20 miles for a bargain.

Totally agree with this! My local hardware/garden store has neighbors working there, who are knowledgeable about everything they sell and more helpful than the big-box stores.

My ears are in bad shape. Terrible tinnitus and hearing loss, but I think that's from when I was a kid.

Same here, I'm lucky to not have tinnitus but my hearing is shot, from playing in punk bands in the 80's and stupidly thinking only nerds used earplugs.

After...

Looks great!

Oh no, just realized all the things I quoted to respond to were yours - just a coincidence I swear, I'm not a stalker and other people's posts were just as interesting...

 

[littledog]

I will not use jars that are not meant for canning to can with. Like old salsa jars or something. The seals are not meant to be reused. I'm a stickler when it comes to safely canning, I don't need anyone getting sick. I have a huge stash of real canning jars & I always use new lids, I do not ever reuse them. Could it work, probably - but is it worth it? Heck no.

Same here, not only are the lids in store-bought products not meant to be reused, I believe the jars themselves are too weak to hold up to processing and storing, as well.
There's still plenty of other things to use them for, like refrigerator pickling, dry-goods storage...
I have to admit, I sometimes do reuse lids - but only for pickling or fermenting, and only after closely inspecting them to make sure there's no dents, rust, or peeling of the seal.