How Much Canning Do You Need For a Full Year?

Feb 26, 2012 by

Canning and preserving can go a long ways to making sure that your family’s needs are taken care of over the long winter months. With the rapidly rising costs of food and the gas needed to transport it, it is becoming more and more of a necessity to do everything you can to make sure that you have plenty of food you have grown or have been able to get in season.

Start with a Plan

Get a Good Idea of What Your Family Will Eat

One of the biggest mistakes that new and seasoned gardeners and canners alike make is growing or canning food they are not even sure that their family will eat. Another mistake is to preserve far more of one time than you are likely to get your family to consume in a years’ time. To the best thing that you can do is to start with a plan.

  • What does you family really love from the garden
  • What did You use the Most of last winter
  • What are the items you are most quickly refilling from Your Pantry?
  • what sits on your Shelves and does not get eaten?

TIP  – If you have an inventory list, take a close look at it and find the items that are most popular, many things on your list can be preserved if you are not doing it already. Aside from plant based foods, meats can also be canned, as well as complete meals.

Make a List of the Items You know Your Family Will Eat

Start by making a list of the items you know your family will eat, and make an approximate list of how many jars, or other units that your family will eat in a year. Keep in mind that you can dry, freeze and can just about anything providing you have the materials and the storage space for it.

HINT : Canning is just one way to keep your food, You can also dry, freeze and smoke foods.

Make a list of things you ran out of last year and how soon in the year you ran out, this will give you an basic idea of how much you should can this year.

Drop Anything from your list that is still sitting on the shelf, there is a reason why it is not getting eaten, If you just canned too much of it, keep in mind that many can goods can last longer than a year if properly stored, so You can easily finish up and then add it to your list next year.

Make a list based on what you find from the notes you have taken. Prioritize your list by what you know will be of the most use to your family and what you can grow yourself.

Use Your List to Plan Your Garden and Buying

Most of us do not grow enough to feed our family, but if we have a list of what we Want to can this year, we can watch for sales, search for bargains or jump on freebies when our neighbors have more than they can use. A well planned list will keep you in the know and help you to organize your canning year accordingly.

Figuring out How Much to Plant

Figuring out how to plan your garden to feed your whole family is not an exact science, It depends on a lot of factors such as:

  • How many People in your family
  • How good your growing Year is
  • How much of an item You will be using.
  • Your growing Conditions

The best thing to do is to figure out the approximate yield in pounds for your garden, then calculate how many pounds per quart jar. The links below will give you some starter numbers to work with, but don’t forget that these numbers are just approximates.

Yields From Fresh Vegetables and fruits – This link will tell you how many pounds you will need per quart jar of food, the list is short but you should be able to approximate other foods using this list.

Pounds Per Row – This PDF was written for Virginia but it will give you a basic idea of the yield in pounds per 10 ft. row for a wide range of crops while this yield  is approximate depending on your location and growing conditions it serves as a good guide for planning how much to plant to get the desired harvest.

A Final note

Make sure to keep good gardening records, you can keep them in a notebook or on your computer, but make sure to note what type of harvest you got, the crop you planted, how much you planted and how many jars you got from your harvest. Also note what your family ate over the year, so you can keep track for next year and have a much more accurate idea of what to grow.

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Preparing for the Upcoming Canning Season

Jun 24, 2011 by

Preparing for the Upcoming Canning Season

canningIf you love to do jams and jellies then most likely you have already started on your canning for the year. I honestly intended to do jams this year but with the arrival of a new grandchild, and a father in Law having  a triple bypass time just got away from me. Still it is time to start taking stock and getting ready for the new Canning season. If you have never canned before you might want to pick up a book as your first expense, not only will it show you all the right equipment that you should get for your canning but it will also give you a nice list of starter recipes to get going with. Alternatively you can visit a few of the more reliable sites online to get the facts you need. I have been canning for a lot of years, but I still love browsing recipes and getting new ideas, I have a few websites I really like to follow and will visit them year after year.

Make a List of Canning Supplies

As I am thinking about canning this year, I am making a mental list of all of the things that I will need to make sure I have, any extra canning jars I need, canning lids, pectin and the spices that I use in pickling. All these things add up fast, so making a list will make sure I don’t have to go out and buy it all at once. Fortunately I have plenty of jars, but will need to pick up a lot of lids; I find that the earlier in the year I do it the easier they are to find and the cheaper I can get them. If I wait too long the discount stores run out and I have to go to the more expensive grocery stores to buy them. If you go shopping early enough in the year you can get canning jars from yard sales, thrift stores and even ask around with neighbors, this will save you a lot of money and allow you to get really stocked up on canning jars.

Make Another List of Things you Plan to Can

canningYou might even want to plan this list before you do your supply list, or at least do both at the same time. This way you can make sure you have everything on hand, and you won’t have to go running out to the store for sugar, salt or spices at the last minute. Canning is hard enough work when the season is in full swing without having to worry about running back and forth to the store. What I usually do is make a list of things I know I am going to or have to can from the garden. Things like tomato sauce, green beans, salsa, and relish are always at the top of my list. I try to add a few new things to make the list a bit more robust, this year I think I am going to do what I have been thinking about for the past couple of years and try some new picked vegetables. With a hubby that grew up in England anything pickled is always a popular choice. I make a final list of things I would like to can if I can get the stuff together for it. These items would include stuff like canned peaches, apple sauce, canned corn, things I don’t grow but will be on the lookout for all year at prices I can’t turn down. If I have a list then when the deals show up I know what to do with them.

Getting all my Equipment in Order

Finally I make sure I have everything I need and it is all cleaned up and ready to go, nothing is worse than pulling out the tomato mill only to find out a piece walked off in the middle of the winter and you have to find it or order another one with 50lbs of tomatoes sitting on your counter. Make sure that your pressure canner is all tuned up and checked out, that you have all the utensils you need, and your jars have all been inspected for nicks or other problems. I keep mine in the boxes they came in but invariably there are always jars that got damaged along the way. Dig up your recipes and get them ready to go as well, I have a problem with losing recipes from one year to the next, a common problem when you only use them once a year, this year I am going to solve that problem by getting a notebook that is just for canning recipes. Once you have all of your supplies in order and your lists made, know where everything is, you will find that your canning adventures will go much more smoothly

If you need help with learning how to can there are several great books on Amazon that can help you get started.

Canning

Enjoy your Season of canning make sure to let us know what you canned this year by leaving a comment below!

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Long Term Food Storage Methods

Nov 11, 2010 by

Today we have many options for long term food storage, as long as all of our appliances are operating properly. There are several techniques used to preserve fresh foods for extended periods of time under normal conditions, including freezing, canning, dehydrating, and freeze-drying.

Freezing

Archaeologists have found evidence that man started freezing meats thousands of years ago. At first, freezing was only possible during winter months in temperate climates.

Before electricity became common in homes, there was the ice box in the city and the dairy in the country. Dairies were basically underground rooms where temperatures were cooler.

Ice boxes varied in design, but they made use of large blocks of ice to keep milk, dairy products and other foods from spoiling. The first refrigerators were not that different from the iceboxes.

Deep freezers became popular in the 1950s for several reasons. Concerns over previous wars and poor relationships with foreign countries were among them; people were motivated to have extra food on hand “just in case.”

Practically all foods can be frozen. Although the taste can be negatively affected in some cases, the foods are safe to eat for months. It is a common practice among hunters to store wild game in the freezer during the hunting season and use it throughout the year.

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