Canning your own veggies?

Does anyone can their own veggies?

I am considering doing it this year.

Anyone have any experience with it?

Re: Canning your own veggies?

I jarred my own tomatoes this year. If you need help with that, let me know. We had a lot of fun doing it.

I got a lot of information from the older generation -- friends parents, but even at the 'farms' I visited to price out equipment and bushels .... Pat's Farms and Cross Island Farms both had very knowledgable staff willing to share lots of information.

Re: Canning your own veggies?

Re: Canning your own veggies?

I bought wide mouth mason jars at Pat's Farms. $10 for 12 jars (quarts). You save the jars and rings for subsequent years and just buy the rubber caps going forward. I have a small arsneal of jars in my garage now.

I bought a hand crank tomato strainer at Cross Island Farms for around $40. It worked really well - easy to crank and we took turns as to not get tired - but really it worked easily. Motorized cranks are expensive but worth it if you do a lot every single year. For our first year we weren't investing a lot of money.

I bought 7 bushels of tomatoes at Pat's Farms. THey were $15/bushel I believe - maybe $17. I think you get 12-15 quarts out of each bushel.

I will FM you the directions when I have a free minute. I believe I posted them this summer on the Food board but I have to check. Otherwise I might have it in a word document.

A few check-out ladies at Pat's Farms were telling me about how they can all sorts of fruits and veggies - so if you ever went in there and struck up a conversation with the ladies that look like they are from Eastern Europe, I bet you could learn a lot about canning other fruits/veggies

There are a ton of online resources and youtube videos also. DH and I watched a lot of them ... The biggest key is SANITIZATION - boiling for the right amount of time, etc ... I am 6 months post-jarring and I haven't had any spoiling issues.

I also bought a $20 canning pot at Ace Hardware, but when we actually did it, we borrowed these huge metal tubs from a friends dad and were able to boil 18 jars at a time.

We borrowed Turkey friers from friends --- each frier pot fit almost a whole bushel at a time. We had 4 burners going and it really helped move it along quickly. My friends mom, however, does everything right on her stove right in her kitchen! 6 bushels in 2 days. So it's possible to do it all in the kitchen if you are doing it just for your family (1-2 bushels).


I'll forward you the info or send you the link from food & recipes when I find it...

Lisa

Message edited 2/7/2011 9:54:51 PM.

Re: Canning your own veggies?

Thank you so much!

Re: Canning your own veggies?

Funny I was just talking to someone at work tonight who does this. She buys all her supplies at agway and you can buy books there that tell you how to do it. You have to be very careful so you don't get bacteria