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 How to Start Home Canning
I’m in a new season and learning an exciting life skill – home canning!  I wanted to share with you how I’ve started persevering food and what I’ve learned thus far.
Since we  have our  first large country  garden I knew my next skill to tackle was learning how to home can.  It has been an upfront expense, but I know that our investment is well worth the rewards. Just think, a pantry stocked with home-grown produce!  Next year I’ll have very little to buy, as you will see below.
My Home Canning Supplies
One of my first purchases was the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving.  This guide took me step-by-step through learning to can; from using the water bath method, to giving tips on using my pressure canner.  It walks through how to can fruits, vegetables, meat, and lists a variety of recipes for salsas, jams, pickles and more.
I just ordered the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving.
The largest investment is the pressure cooker /canner. I chose this particular item because it had both a water bath and pressure canner feature.  Here is a very thorough post on the difference between a pressure canner and water bath.  As the post explains you really need both, because both methods of canning serve different purposes.  So far I’ve home canned blackberry jam and pickles using the water bath method, and canned 7 qts of blackberries in light syrup using the pressure canner.
To Get Started Home Canning
To get started home canning you’ll need the following:
- Pressure canner and/or water bath.
- Instruction books: like the ones that I mentioned above. Â You can also pick up this Step-By-Step Canning Guide for free on Kindle.
- Glass Jars: You’ll need both pint and quart size. Your jar sets will come with lids and rings.  After your first year of canning you’ll need to buy replacement lids.
- Funnel
- Jar Lifter
- Pectin: Pectin is found naturally in apples.  It’s used in jams for thickening.  The Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving has instructions on how to make jams, jellies, and preserves, without pectin; it is more time-consuming.
- Ascorbic Acid:Â Ball Fruit-Fresh Produce Protector (5.0oz)Â is needed to keep your fruit in its natural color.
- Sugar/Vinegar: You’ll use a lot of sugar and vinegar in various recipes (not always the same recipe ;)) Â There is low-sugar, and sugar-free, recipes as well. Â Here’s a post on using honey instead of sugar.
 7 quarts of our home-grown blackberries in a low sugar syrup.
Home Canning and Preserving Resources
- Ball’s Home Canning: Ball’s official home canning site offers recipes, tips, videos, and supplies.
- National Center for Home Food Preservation: I’ve read this site like a book over these last few weeks.  There is information for any question that I’ve had about canning.
- Mother Earth News: Of course I don’t believe in Mother Earth…I believe in Jesus. 😉  This site offers information on organic gardening, canning, farming, and more.
- Six Tips for No-Stress Canning shared by The Prairie Homestead
- There’s a great getting started article on Keeper of the Home Canning: Not What You Think
- PickYourOwn.org: Offers home canning directions, canning do’s and don’ts, home canning recipes, making freezer jam, homemade applesauce and more.
 Cost of Home Canning
The cost of planting our garden (including paying a homeschool friend to till it and buying plants) was $75. Â The Lord blessed me with 50% off at the Christian greenhouse where we bought our plants too.
Naomi at one end of our pumpkin patch.
Between the books, canning equipment, jars, additives, etc that I’ve bought this year we’ve spent $142 on our initial home canning investment.  I foresee that I need several more cases of quart and pint size jars; I’ll be close to $200 total on these first year expenses by the end of the summer.  However, next year the cost is replacement lids!
Including the cost of our garden, plus additional fruits that I’ll buy by the bushel from our neighboring orchard, our first year canning experience will be around $350 = All supplies ($200) + Garden ($75) + Additional fruit/vegetable purchases ($75).
Our nightly garden harvest. Â Right now we have squash, peppers, cucumbers, and we’re getting at least a gallon per day of blackberries.
Joy in a Jar
One of my readers on Facebook said that canning is like having joy in a jar. I completely agree, already. Â The time that I’ve spent canning has been very relaxing. Naomi and Zion have helped me; I can see this being a joy-filled annual family event.
So, are you ready to try home canning? Â
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Hi! I have been enjoying your blog the last couple of days. I enjoy canning and have been working on a couple of projects this week….pizza sauce and mangos. I have linked the post that I wrote last year on canning mangos.
Thanks,
Margaret
Margaret, thank you for linking up you mangos! I hope to make pizza sauce too. We’ve planted 27 tomato plants. They are FULL of green tomatoes now. Once those come in I’ll be canning everything tomato! I’d love your pizza sauce recipe too 🙂
Way to go! Canning is a wonderful investment. Since you are getting so many blackberries and may be canning them I would suggest that you open a jar and try them out. They are such a soft fruit that you may not be happy with the results. Let me know what you think. We have a steamer/juicer (not an extractor) and have juiced many quarts that we later drank or turned into jelly. I’ll be watching to see your future canning endeavors since I just subscribed in RSS.
Thanks for the tip! My plan with canning the blackberries is to use them in homemade smoothies, yogurt, and blackberry cobbler. My thinking was that when I cook them they turn to mush anyway, lol. At least this way we can have blackberry yogurt in January. We recently were a part of the east coast power outage. In past years I froze them. But after loosing 3 freezers of food it makes canning even more appealing. I love your idea of the juicer for juice and jelly. I can see that I have many more kitchen gadgets that I need to invest in. Thanks so much for signing up!
Confession – Pressure cookers SCARE ME!
ME TOO!!!!! If I can’t waterbath it…. I dry it 😉
Oh you silly. Don’t be scared 😉 I do want to start drying veggies & fruits too. Especially since I can’t can all this squash and zucchini. That would be great for winter soups and casseroles!
Our garden is about 15x10ft. The problem we are running into is that we don’t have enough of 1 certain thing to can every night when we pick. We have been freezing our green beans because of that, although I would prefer them canned. Any advice about this?
I don’t can every night either. I set up shop on the weekends and keep my assembly line moving throughout the day. Why don’t you can your beans after you’ve stored up enough in the freezer? I do that with our blackberries. We pick at least a gallon per day and wash and freeze them; then as I mentioned, on the weekends I pull them out for canning. 🙂
Never considered canning after freezing, they turn out ok? Does the pressure cooker you got, can quart sized jars (cold method). I read reviews saying it wasnt tall enough
It pressure cooks 7 quart size jars at a time. It’s water bath feature only cans pint & 1/2 pint jars; great for jams. I will most likely order a wire rack for the bottom of one of my large stock pots to water bath quart size jars. Pickles are the only item (for now) that I’d like to water bath by the quart, instead of the pint.
Hi!
Thanks for letting me share my own recipe of helathy and tasty Soda Pop Substitute: Essential Oil “Sassy” Water!
Here’s the link:
https://www.momessentials.net/soda-substitute-essential-oil-water/
Thanks for sharing, Jenni!
I am so proud for you and all your canning adventures! Thank you for sharing the how tos. What a great resource!
Thank you Tricia. I hope to share a lot more!
Great post on canning. I’ve done some canning of assorted jams and would love to do more with vegetables for our growing family! Thanks for posting great tips!
I also ♥ canning!!!! I just ♥ the “ping” of the lids as they seal. It’s like they are saying “you did it!”. I just wanted to share my favorite canning website with you: canninggranny.com . She has easy to follow instructions if you have already canned and know the basics. She also has some great recipes!! I was overrun with yellow squash and didn’t know what to do with it. She has a recipe for pickles using them that taste like bread and butter and they ROCK!!!
Since we have virtually NO freezer space, canning and drying are my ways to preserve this year.
Thanks for sharing!
Wow, canninggranny.com may be my new best friend. Thanks so much for sharing!
When we lived up north, I LOVED canning (or at least loved the results of canning). Down here in TX though, our garden produce has been so limited we just eat everything fresh. However, you really have some great canning ideas, so if I ever get anything to grow, I’ll know who to ask! 🙂
I love to read your blog. We are on vacation in Alabama this week,going home today and going to our lakehouse to make a week of family canning. My brother, his girlfriend, my Mom, my husband ,our 3 little kids and I will can tomatoes, salsa, green beans and peaches all this upcoming week. Unfortunately my husband has been very ill for the last 11 months and we were unable to plant a garden, but will buy from a local farmer.
That’s wonderful Kim! I plan to buy from our orchards and local organic farmers whatever we don’t have in our own garden. SO sorry about your husband; praying for the Lord’s healing! xoxo
A girl after my own heart!! Love, Love, Love strawberry jam!!
https://attheendofthedrive.blogspot.com/2012/04/strawberry-season.html
Have a wonderful weekend!
Blessings,
Alison
Your garden is beautiful! I can not wait to get my fall garden planted!!
Tattler reuseable canning lids are great and save money in the long run. Additionally, I saved the Classico spaghetti sauce jars as they are also Mason jars… two for one… my initial purchases of that sauce has yielded me over 2 dozen jars that I keep reusing (we are a family of 3)… also, thrift stores can be great for used canning supplies. Your berries look yummy! 🙂
Love your post! 🙂 Just wanted to share that if you contact your local county extension agent they can/will provide you with free (or inexpensive) canning and freezing guides. They will also do a pressure check on old pressure canners, if you inherited an old one from someone, for a small fee. The extension service is an invaluable resource for both gardening and preserving. 🙂
I am so jealous. We planted a garden and nothing except the cherry tomatoes survived the summer. Even with nightly watering (got the $145 water bill to prove it, not to mention all the rain water we used whenever it did rain). Must have planted hundreds of seeds with no luck. Maybe better luck next year if the weather is better. My brother even started things in his green house before planting. It was a bad summer in Arkansas.