grean beans are SUPER easy... Apples are easy and great canned!

Must green beans be grown in the soil, or can you get good results from growing them in a large pot?

Pinto beans and other dried beans. We're having chile right now with canned beans!
All types of stuff, mostly with the weekly deal from the market. Lots of yummy jams.
Keep planning to do some soups and beef burgundy but haven't gotten to it.
Oh, and the apple pear sauce, juice and jelly were a huge hit!

i would say that you could do large pots... i know that my mom raised one heck of a crop 2 years ago in raised beds.. she raised pole beans and gave them a panel to climb.. it was a great success...

Sammy,

I only can some fruits (oranges, apples, cherries, sometimes peaches), jellies, jams, fruit butters, hot peppers (in many forms....as hot whole peppers, hot pepper slices or rings, candied jalapenos, etc.), cucumbers (as all kinds of pickles and pickle relishes), hot pickled veggie mixes, and tomatoes in many forms (salsa, sauces, etc.). I could can a lot more, but with many veggies, we like them better frozen than canned. Some years I make sauerkraut by fermenting cabbage, and then I can it after it is done. Last year I canned 12 pints of sauerkraut.

I have three freezers so mostly freeze the green beans, broccoli, okra, peppers, sugar snap peas, carrots, some onions (freeze some chopped, some sliced and eat the rest fresh), sweet corn, cabbage (as freezer slaw), southern peas (purplehull pinkeyes, blackeyes, etc.), summer squash and zucchini and some tomatoes (to be used for cooking).

I also dehydrate lots of vegetables every year, and sometimes dehydrate some fruits.

It is possible to can almost all fruits and vegetables but with some of them you use a boiling water bath canner and with others you must use a pressure canner for safety reasons.

I also use lots of fruits to can fruit-flavored pancake and waffle syrup, like blueberry syrup or strawberry syrup.

I will can anything as long as I have jars and time. Last year, our local Wal-Mart had a great price on cherries for weeks and weeks so I kept buying them and making cherry jam, cherry jelly, cherry preserves, canned cherries, cherry pancake syrup, cherry-chocolate ice cream sauce and even maraschino cherries.

Sometimes I have so many crops being harvested at one time that I could not possibly can all of them by myself, so I split the harvest and can part of it, dehydrate part of it and freeze the rest.

During peak harvest, which for me last year began in mid-June and really didn't end until late August, I sometimes spent up to 18 hours a day harvesting and preserving food. It has to be something you truly enjoy doing or the labor involved will practically kill you. I love it, and I love it even more when I look at all the shelves full of goodies that were canned without artificial flavorings, colorings and other additives that commercial processors used and which home canners do not.

Dawn

I'm like Dawn. We tend to like most veggies frozen and, up until last year, I only had a waterbath canner. I love canning pickles, tomatoes, and fruity stuff because it's so easy and relatively quick. However, a friend of ours was downsizing last year and gave me one of her extra pressure canners. Last year was a mess so I didn't get to try anything in it but I'm determined to at least can some green beans this year.

Diane

Last year I just froze things. I am trying to learn to can stuff and need to collect the stuff to do it. But boy, once I learn look out, I will be gardening in the front yard as well as the back! :)

(and yes, the thought occurred to me before....)

For anyone planning to begin canning in earnest this year, I suggest you go ahead and pick up your Ball Blue Book on the canning aisle in stores as soon as you see it (our Wal-Mart kept them in stock all winter for the first time ever instead of only having them during the summer) and, if you don't have the basic canning supplies like a water bath canner and canning rack, jar lifter, etc., get those early too before they sell out.

I've already been counting to see how many empty jars I have on hand, how many rings I have, how many flat lids I need to buy (hundreds!), etc. I have 15 boxes of powdered pectin and 6 boxes of liquid pectin on hand, so clearly I need more liquid pectin and also need to buy several bottles of Fruit-Fresh before the summer rush begins. If you need to buy a pressure canner, beat the rush on those too. Most stores keep only a handful on the shelves and when those sell out, it can be a week or two or more before more arrive on the store shelves. Paying to have a heavy pressure canner shipped to you ASAP can get pretty expensive.

I've been buying a case of jars per week since the first of the year and will continue to do so. There's nothing worse than needing jars in June or July and discovering the stores have run out of jars.

I use a lot of jars, and since we give away hundreds of jars of canned goods every year, we always need more. Some of Tim's co-workers and some of our friends do save the jars and return them to us, but others don't.

Also, if you intend to can lots and lots of jellies and jams that involve the use of sugar, it is a lot more economical to buy it in 25 or 50-lb. bags at Sam's. Last year, our Wal-Mart even had 25-lb. bags of sugar during the height of the jelly-making season.

I buy my pickling spices and other canning spices in bulk from a supplier in Fort Worth because I can buy tons and tons for what a couple of small jars would cost in a grocery store.

If you'll be using lots of vinegar or bottled lemon juice or bottled lime juice (I use all three) when pickling or making pepper jellies or salsas, buy the large sizes of vinegar before everyone starts making pickles. They sell out during pickling season here.

If you pick up your canning salt on the baking aisle in the store instead of the canning aisle, you'll get more for your money and canning salt is canning salt is canning salt.

Remember that you'll need to label everything you can, so have labels on hand.

If freezing, there are freezer labels and freezer markers for that purpose.

I always have a package or two or three of plastic freezer jars on hand and freezer pectin too so that I can make freezer jam or jelly (or salsa) when the canner is full and I need to make more "now" because the harvest is piling up and I need to process food as quickly as possible.

Often the difference in having all your food processing supplies on hand versus running all over town gathering them is simply amazing. There is so much less stress if all your canning supplies are sitting there waiting for you. And, too, if you walk into a farmer's market or store and find some produce at an incredibly wonderful price you can pick up a ton (or half a ton) of it and take it home and process it right away because you have all the supplies you need waiting at home for you.

Dawn

Owiebrain,
I picked up a couple of pressure canners at an estate sale last year, cheap. I decided it was cheaper than the gas of borrowing Mom's when it usually was at my sister in law's house. I took both to the county extension agent who tested both the seals and gauges for free.

Dawn,
Outstanding list of supplies. I'd add jelly bag, too. After multiple misfires in picking one up, p-mac saved the day for me at the end of the season.

Thanks so much for this information, Dawn. I bought the book last year, and was plannning on getting the jars soon.I remember having watched my mother snap and can beans, but that was so many years ago, that I have not really processed it. I remember her putting things in a large pot on the stove, and moving quickly to the sink.

Of course I am only thinking about tomatoes, and she canned green beans. There is probably a huge difference there.

I really appreciate you taking the time to give us this information.

Sammy

I only do pickles and some salsa. Was going to do green beans last year until I discovered it would not be safe in just BWB. Im scared to do the pressure thing...

Ditto on the extension testing, seedmama. I took it in for testing last year, thinking I'd actually get around to canning something, and I'll take it in for testing again this year.

Diane

Seedmama,

I bought extra jelly bags last year, so didn't mention them, but I'm glad you did. As you might remember, I had a sort of "big" jelly year here. : )

Remember to pick up spice bags and cheesecloth too, y'all. It is always good to have them on hand. I always buy them in advance of the season because you never can find them if you're looking for them at the same time the entire rest of the world is looking for them.

Before the next big fruit harvest, I'm going to buy a steam juice extractor too. I sure wish I'd had one last year when all the peaches and plums were piled in bowls and buckets everywhere. Since we don't usually have two "great" fruit years back to back, I doubt I'll have to get a juice extractor this year. I do still have enough frozen, extracted plum juice to make about 120 jars of jelly, and I froze and saved a lot of plum pulp for spiced plum butter too. So, even if the plum trees do nothing this year at all, I'll be making plum jelly and plum butter.

Sammy, You're welcome. Canning now is much different from what it was when I was a kid. The safety rules are tougher and tougher every time they revise them, and practices our parents used in the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s are not necessarily the same ones approved for use now.

Sometimes it is hard for me to stop remembering how my dad always did it, but I try to stay up-to-date on the latest research and recommended processes and follow the current, approved safety practices. I'd rather not give any of our family or friends botulism or salmonella or listeria, but canning rules sure seem a lot stricter now than they used to be.

Sometimes I see "canning recipes" in magazines that scare me because they do not meet the NHCFP guidelines. Then, in the next issue of the magazine, you'll see the corrected recipe and apology. I don't know why they can't do their research and get it right to begin with.

Also, for any of you who are new to canning, there are low-sugar pectin products and low-sugar recipes for folks who don't like the extreme sweetness of jellies and jams made with sugar.

Dawn