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Preserving Your Garden Harvest: A Guide to Canning Produce

Preserve Your Fruits & Veggies for Year-Round Use

Assortment of canned vegetables and fruits on pantry shelves.

Canning allows you to use your fresh produce all year long with a relatively easy process. In this blog I will go over how to can some of our favorite produce that we grow here at Selmi’s.


Tomatoes

There are two methods for canning tomatoes: hot-water-bath canning and pressure canning. Both follow the same starting steps: boil tomatoes for about a minute, strain from water and let cool, peel the tomatoes, put in around 2 tablespoons of lemon juice or a ½ tablespoon of citric acid in each jar you are using, you can add a teaspoon of salt for additional flavor if you wish and then pack the jars with your peeled tomatoes and close them.

For hot-water-bath canning, just use a stockpot (that’s taller than the jars by at least 2 inches) filled halfway with boiling water, have a rack at the bottom so the jar doesn’t touch the bottom of the pot, once the water is boiling lower the jars in, place the lid on top and leave them in for around 40 minutes for pints and 45 minutes for quarts.

A pressure canner is a power tool that you will fill with 3 to 4 inches of water and then jars are placed on the rack. Leave in the pressure canner for 15 minutes for pints and 20 minutes for quarts and then allow for 10 minutes for venting.


Green Beans

Green beans can be canned hot or cold (raw) packed. To cold pack your green beans, fill your jar with clean, snapped, raw green beans (without pre-cooking). Pack them as tightly as you can into the jar and then cover them with boiling water, leaving about 1 inch at the top.

To hot pack your green beans simply boil the snapped beans for about 5 minutes, drain them, and then pack them loosely into the jars and cover them with more boiling water leaving one inch at the top.

For either method, make sure to remove air bubbles by running a utensil down the inside of the jar between the edge and the beans. You can also add salt to the jars to help with the taste.

Then use a pressure canner to finish the canning process, leave in for 20 minutes for pints and 25 minutes for quarts.


Corn

Corn also uses either hot or cold packing and is recommended to be done with a pressure canner.

The first thing you will want to do is prep the corn by shucking it and slicing off the kernels. You can get around 4 ears of corn in each pint car and 8 ears in a quart. To cold pack the corn loosely put the kernels into the jars and cover with boiling water, leaving 1 inch at the top.

To hot pack, measure out the kernels into a saucepan. Every 4 cups of kernels will require around 1 cup of boiling water. Bring the water to a boil, add kernels and let them boil for 5 minutes. Pour the corn and water into the jars, leave 1 inch at the top and remove any air bubbles from the jar. Leave the corn in the pressure canner for 55 minutes for pints and 85 minutes for quarts. Afterward, leave about 10 minutes for venting.

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