No more canning this year!

My parents live on the river and subscribe to the native american school of gardening.  Flood plain soil on the garden every spring.  They have 7’ tall tomato plants producing heirloom tomatoes like mad.  I’ve done all I can, 35 jars of salsa later in the last week i’m not canning any more tomato products this year.  In June we went and picked 20 pounds of strawberries at the farm and I turned that into 15 jars of strawberry jam.  

If anything I may make one small batch of pickles for the winter, but i’m sick of canning.

It’s a lot of work. My mom did this every year. But oh it’s sooo good.

I'd give you $20 for 5 jars of salsa.

My mother used to can tomatoes and made strawberry, peach and blueberry jam. When she died, I inherited the last six jars of peach jam and I made them last as long as I could, just using the tiniest bit at a time. I miss that stuff, and I miss her. I haven’t had canned tomatoes in more than 12 years. 

I have one peach jam from last year left.  That on an english muffin with peanut butter is insane.  I made a couple jars of blackberry too last year with berries i picked at my parents house off wild plants.  There were millions of blackberries this year too but I didn’t have time to pick more than a couple handfulls a day for the kids to snack on.  A couple years ago i did raspberry jam and orange marmalade.  Need to do more of the orange.

My wife’s grandmother had four boys from 1930 to 1936.  Living in rural Alabama she had a huge garden and canned all the time.  These shelves were floor to ceiling and all jars were three deep.   If it ever unbolted off the wall it would kill her as this was next to her bed.   I have a great video on Facebook but I can’t resave it to my phone to upload.  

Was just staring at my tomato collection and thinking about a canning session.  Those jams nom nom delicious..

Canning salsa is a lot of work.  I made about nine pints last weekend.

But canoeing seems as popular as ever.  

I wish I had this problem, but alas I have no veggie garden (yet). I do have several basil, dill and oregano plants and I dehydrate those and store them in vacuum sealed jars for use all year.

I've been wanting to can veggies for a long time,  and I have all the equipment for water bath canning. If I remember correctly, you store them without the rings on, right?

EastCoastMojo said:

I wish I had this problem, but alas I have no veggie garden (yet). I do have several basil, dill and oregano plants and I dehydrate those and store them in vacuum sealed jars for use all year.

I've been wanting to can veggies for a long time,  and I have all the equipment for water bath canning. If I remember correctly, you store them without the rings on, right?

You can leave the rings or pull them and use again.  I have hundreds of them though.  I could have a thousand quart jars if i wanted to drag them out of a basement, but I don’t and the house is closing on the 31st so unfortunately they’ll probably get thrown in a dumpster.  I leave the rings on so that when the kids are digging for something they don’t bump and unseal a jar

berkeley. I need to get my lazy ass down to the woods to harvest chanterelles for pickling!

In reply to Patrick :

Can't stop yet.  So far this year we have 30 quarts of Roma tomatoes, 8 pints of the wife's V8 soup, 15 pints of green beans, and 18 green peppers stuffed and in the freezer.  Second crop of green beans is coming up nicely so there will be more of them to can.  And I might do some salsa with the tomatoes and peppers that are still out there.  Wife wants to go get a bushel of peaches this weekend to can them.

Thank goodness for the pressure canner.  We used to do this and more with a water bath.

Having a very down year in terms of yield, and a local squirrel has decided that they like tomatoes, too, which kinda sucks.

I have a ravenous deer population in my yard - sometimes as many as a dozen at a time - and so can't have any sort of food crop. I had a bunch of strawberry plants and they ate them to the roots. I got one strawberry out of it. :-( I gave it to my 3 year old and she loved it. :-)

alfadriver said:

Having a very down year in terms of yield, and a local squirrel has decided that they like tomatoes, too, which kinda sucks.

Likewise. I can count my tomato harvest on one hand, peppers, watermelon, and carrots were total losses. I'm going to get my crossbow restrung this winter for pest control next year. Also going to be putting up fences with the leftover hardware cloth from the chicken coop. 

EastCoastMojo said:

I've been wanting to can veggies for a long time,  and I have all the equipment for water bath canning. If I remember correctly, you store them without the rings on, right?

I just started canning this year, so I’m learning as I go.  So far I have a batch of blueberry jam and a batch of salsa under my belt.

The topic of storing rings on vs. rings off just crossed my radar yesterday.  I guess it makes sense to leave them off to prevent mold growth.  No experience to draw from here though...

The salsa ingredients I used came from a local produce stand.  Growing a garden might just happen next year.