Posted on 08/09/2009 6:58:26 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
During the first World War, the U.S. government asked its citizens to contribute to the war effort by growing gardens. Americans rose to the challenge. The millions of quarts of provender produced by this astonishing effort not only fed American families, but helped feed starving people all across Europe. Humankind caring for humankind in a time of need – an example the world could heed today.
Similar food shortages have occurred throughout the centuries. When Napoleon was faced with the problem of feeding his rapidly growing military, the French government offered 12,000 francs to anyone who could figure a solution. A man named Nicolas Appert, though not completely understanding why, discovered that by putting food into a bottle or jar, sealing the jar up tight and cooking it for a few hours, the food could be preserved for consumption later. Napoleon’s army didn’t go hungry.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, flocks of free-thinkers sailed the ocean blue in search of a place where they could live free and govern their own lives. Once settled in their respective colonies, they too found daunting the challenge of having enough to eat. Through much trial and error, they discovered how to provide their daily needs and to preserve the precious leftovers for leaner times. Waste not, want not. The colonists learned how to take care of one another.
Preservation progress came at a cost, however. For example, it wasn’t until the late 19th century that anyone knew about Clostridium botulinum, the soil-borne bacterium whose lethal toxin, sometimes found in improperly canned food, claimed countless lives. Likewise, pickled provender frequently went bad when cork stoppers or pig’s bladders were used to cover the crocks and jars. Jams and jellies, sealed with brandy-soaked paper, often sprouted mold. But help was on the way – in the form of a rubber-sealed glass jar.
Tinsmith John L. Mason couldn’t possibly have known how his 1858 patent would permanently revolutionize family nutrition. His machine mass-produced threaded metal jar lids that, in combination with threaded-neck jars and rubber sealing rings, made it easy for virtually anyone to achieve a safe seal when canning. Mason’s canning jar and lid concept caught on immediately and opened the door for several improvements and modifications with familiar names like Ball, Atlas E-Z Seal and Kerr. Through time, the rubber seal has improved, as has the science behind the processing, but home canning is every bit as accessible today as it was in 1858.
You, too, can can
Before starting a canning project of your own, you should keep a few things in mind. It is best to gather only the produce you can work up in a few hours. This ensures optimum nutrition and quality. If possible, harvest early in the day.
Get your supplies out and check them over. Always use jars made especially for canning rather than old mayonnaise or pickle jars, and never use jars that are cracked or chipped around the rim. Use only the two-piece screw lids, never re-using the flat piece, as its protective ability is compromised once lifted off a jar.
Lids and jars should be sterilized before use by boiling for at least 10 minutes, leaving them in the hot water until they are needed.
The two canning methods in general use today make use of either a boiling-water bath or pressure canner for processing. The boiling-water system requires longer processing times and is suitable for foods with higher acid contents, while the pressure canner reaches higher temperatures faster and is suitable for virtually all food types. Once you have decided which fruit, vegetable or meat you want to can, be sure to educate yourself on the current recommendations for method, processing time and sterilization precautions for that produce. Your county extension office provides a wealth of information for your area, or you can go online to such sites as the USDA’s National Center for Home Preservation
www.UGA.edu/nchfp
Continues at link...
“My wife freezes a lot of zuccuni and makes a lot of it into my favorite, sweet relish.”
Ask if she’ll share her ‘secret’ recipe; I’m up to my elbows in the stuff! :)
“Picked my own cherries from a small orchard that lets anyone pick their own for a small amount of money and charged by the pound...Love cherry jam...”
I have cherry trees and I was proud to burstin’ this season when my ‘Montmorency’ blessed me for the first time (she’s five years old now) with enough cherries for TWO pies, LOL!
I only have about two dozen peaches on this season and after today’s torrential rains I’ve been afraid to see what’s left of them. *SIGH*
I’ll tell you in the morning...but only if it’s GOOD news, LOL!
Oh, he would go for llamas in a heartbeat! He was all gooey-eyed over them at the County Fair last year. *Rolleyes*
Good call, though. I know I have to play my hand correctly and make him think this is all HIS idea. *WINK* I knows my man... :)
There is a miniature Jersey milk cow that I’ve been telling him about. She’d fit perfectly in the pole barn, and I’m sure ‘Old Man Sweeny’ who owns all the land around us would let me pasture her in the unused meadow...for a fee, the JERK!
http://www.miniaturejerseyassociation.com/HomesteadCows.htm
Jars cost 90 cents each so save them. Dump food and the flat lids. Save the screw on rings if they are not rusty.
I dishwasher the jars with the preheat, heated dry, pot scrubber, etc cycles all turned on. Any jar that does not come clean can be soaked and brushed.
Toss any chipped or cracked jars.
I don’t have a compost pile and not too sure where exactly I would put one. My property is kind of funky the way it and the house sit and full of large trees and bushes. I just cleared out a bunch of weeds (who knew weeds could be illegal, the mayor apparently) and found 2 chokecherry trees. I have no idea how they hid all year on less than half an acre.
I found a box of 12 of those blue quart Ball jars with the Perfect Mason, and the metal screw on lid at a garage sale last year. He wanted $10 for them but since it was the last hour of the last day he gave them to me for $5. I had never seen them before. Hubby uses them for glasses.
I am quite frankly afraid to open those jars downstairs, some of the things looked alive when I went down there last time. I guess I just have to bite the bullet and go down there with the spiders and the bugs, like Nike says “just do it” It is so bad down there the last time we had a tornado warning I loaded up all the kids and we left town and came back after it was over.
Thanks for the post! I wonder if I need a pressure canner? I live at 8,500 ft elevation and the boiling point of water is lower due to lower atmospheric pressure. Can’t make good coffee! The pressure canner would get hotter due to increased pressure.
Also, is the higher temperature why the pressure canner is needed to can meats?
I would like to see a regular canning thread, and other pertanate subjects, like drying or cooking. These are a bit outside of FR’s conservative poltical arena, but they do cut us some slack. :)<<<
Thanks to Diana for letting me know you were looking for more information.
You have a fine thread and one never learns all there is to know and try in canning...LOL, speaking for myself.
You are welcome to join us at this link, we cover it all, and can keep you reading for awhile, as we are now on the third thread, and total 21,000 posts.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2299939/posts?q=1&;page=901
I have a confession ... I am a bad bad bad master gardener. Yes I love heirloom tomatoes. And outside of heirlooms, I plant only indeterminate plants and religiously pinch, tie and gtow in specialy designed 6 ft cages. This year many of you know I experimented with the red plastic sheet mulch .. supposedly the light wavelength reflected increase yield by up to 30%
Alas ... this anal retentive guy got so busy not only did the record keeping fall by the way side, but even my indeterminate plants did not get staked, pruned or attended to. They are all growing and laying on the ground .... mostly grass because I grow in compost trenches.
Ugly, untidy, terrible looking and .... it may just well be one of the largest tomatoe harevests of perfectly formed tomatoes I have ever had. All through one silly process .....NEGLECT!
I’ve got tomatoes everywhere. Coming out the wazoo. I can’t give them away fast enough. We have more than enough to fill 500 quart jars ... and still they are coming. got 5 5 gallon pails full to drop off at our local community food pantry in the morning. Another 5 pails will be ready by wed for sure.
And the indeterminate plants are still blooming and setting tomatoes like crazy.. Perhaps I will never tie up a tomatoe plant (kinky) again.
There is one common trait though .... the old fashioned rutgers taste better than the rest hands down. My mouth is sore from so much acid ... standing in my garden eating a warm rutgers like an apple. Doesn’t get any better than that.
Neglect ... it does a garden good.
Ha! I love recipezaar! I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. Thank you!!
Glad you had luck with your cherry tree. When I moved here I planted the same kind...after the 4th year, it died back to lower than the graft...Now its just a huge bush that does nothing....I really should cut it down...
Thanks to both of you for the interesting threads.
They don’t use rubber on the lids anymore. Now the product used to make the lids seal is called plastisol, and it lasts longer than rubber. That 2 year estimate may have been a cautious estimate for the use of rubber sealed lids, but the plastisol will last much longer.
that is a new one on me.
Can you describe that process? How is the tire cut, around the circumference ? creating two rings?
Living in Bubba country, I thought that I had seen all possible uses for old tires! :)
We have an old farm house from 1906 with a creepy ‘Silence of the Lambs’ basement. My boys used to freak if I sent them down there for anything, even after I put 100 watt bulbs in every fixture, LOL!
How about using those old canned goods for target practice? ;)
I added a second Montmorency Cherry this season, and a Honeycrisp Apple and a Mount Royal plum. I have a good crop of plums on one of my plum trees, but the other not so good.
So, as of now we have three plum, three cherry, three really OLD apple trees that were here when we bought the place, two peach and five newer apples (the Honeycrisp, two Wolf River and two Bonnie Best.)
It’s taken me about 8 years of adding trees, but now I actually have an ‘orchard.’ :)
I do want to add two pear trees, but they’ll need to go on the other side of the drive.
Ate my first peach of the season this morning! I gave Husband a slice...but just one, LOL!
I put the first tire on a patch of dirt, or if you need to do it on grass, then put down a thick, wet layer of newspapers on the bottom. Fill half way with a mix of soil & compost, then put in 4 or 5 potatoes, either whole or pieces that you’ve cut with at least two ‘eyes’ on them, and have allowed the cut sides to dry for a few days.
Then, fill in with more dirt and keep watered. As the plants grow, throw on tire ring after tire ring, continuing to fill with dirt, leaving about 6” or so of leaves above ground. Potatoes need a full sun spot to grow in, so 6 or more hours of sunlight a day is best. Keep them watered. I didn’t fertilize mine at all this season.
I have a ring of three tires this season, but in years past we’ve had them as high as six.
After the plants flower, and then die back later (September, here in my Zone 4) you just push over the tires and harvest your potatoes.
I planted German Butterball, which is a tan skinned, yellow fleshed potato.
Don’t use store-bought to use as they do spray them with a sprouting inhibitor, but if you leave potatoes in a warm-ish dark place, they’ll sprout no matter what. Then you can use them. :)
Watch out for Colorado Potato Beetles, though. If you plant them, they will come. You can use an insecticide on them, or just pluck them off as you see them; they’re bigger than ladybugs with a yellow and back striped back and a reddish head. You can’t miss ‘em!
Tire rings = adjustable mini raised bed gardening!
Raw zucchini is great in tossed salads.
Whatever works. I found a great article in a magazine the other day about growing in bags of top soil. It was pretty efficient and the author said she had beefed up the soil each season, but the bags lasted her for years and years. She was up to something like 150 bags, LOL!
This is a similar acrticle:
http://www.rodale.com/growing-vegetables-bags
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