First - don't over think this. Said by me who's been there, done that. Your local farm store probably offers a traditional (smaller) canning pot for much less the price.

I use the old-fashioned blue w/white speckled canner that is used in the water bath method. I also can a TON of sweet/spicy pickle relishes (and jellies!) with it which are not high in acid. And just so ya know...I tried to go less expensive and use a tamale pot when I started. Yeh, that didn't work out as good as the old-fashioned canner I found at Atwoods. A couple of years back (literally) - my oldest daughter came out and helped me can relish. She was amazed at what we could do!

My only other advice would be to purchase good funnels and a magnet. The funnel is self-explanatory but the magnet will help you deal with the "seals". You can purchase one specifically for canning...or you can go the auto parts store and buy an "extension" magnet which is cheaper.

Hope this helps!

Paula

I would stick with a water bath canner, which is just a big deep pot with a lid and a rack in the bottom to hold the jars off of the bottom of the canner. If you find that you are growing enough to can, and enjoy the processing and the food, then you can always buy a canner later. Most years I don't even use my pressure canner. I use the BWB and freeze the rest.

Spend some time on the Harvest forum and buy the Ball Blue Book for about $7 in the canning dept at Walmart.

The first year make pickles (easy with Mrs Wages mixes) and jelly and salsa. With a year's experience under your belt, you can make a better decision on the need for a pressure canner.

Here is a link that might be useful: Harvest Forum

You also can go to the website of the National Center for Home Food Preservation. This is the agency that approves all canning policies, procedures and recipes. Everything here is safety-tested and approved.

NEVER deviate from a canning recipe. While it is fun to change up a standard cooking recipe and make it your own with the addition or deletion of various ingredients, you simply do not have that sort of flexibility with canning recipes. You have to make the recipes as they are written because that is the version that was tested and found to be safe. Anything you do that changes the pH or density of a canning recipe can result in an unsafe product. Some recipes will list safety-approved variations, or if you want to make a specific change, you can go to the Harvest Forum and ask the canning experts there.

I see canning recipes in books and magazines a lot that I know are not safety-approved and it drives me up the wall. In some cases they are using old recipes that no longer are generally recognized as safe. Always use canning recipes from well-established canning sources like the NHCFP, or the websites of any of the canning supply companies like Ball, Jarden (which now owns Ball), Kerr, etc.

Since everything you listed that you want to can this summer can be canned using a water bath canner, I wouldn't go out and buy a pressure canner yet. Try canning using the water bath method and then, if you like it and want to branch out into canning other food items that require pressure canning, you always can buy a pressure canner somewhere down the road. I hardly ever use the pressure canner I have. I used a traditional speckle canning kettle for ages and ages before I finally bought a nicer one that is stainless steel. I love my stainless steel one, but it doesn't produce a product that is any different from the one my speckled kettle produced--it just looks nicer and shinier while it does it.

I think the crock pot type canner you were looking at is Ball's Jam machine? I suppose it makes it easier to make Jam, but it makes small batches and that's a lot of money to spend for a machine you'll use only on rare occasions. I make a lot of jam some years, but find the whole process enjoyable. If I am going to make jam, I want to be standing there, stirring it, watching it boil, inhaling the delicious aroma. To me, using the crock pot jam maker thing would be like making home-made chocolate chip cookies from a slice-and-bake roll of dough. It might look like a chocolate chip cookie, it might taste like a chocolate chip cookie, but it wouldn't truly be a home-made chocolate chip cookie. If I am going to make jam, I want to make it myself, not pour it into an overpriced crockpot and let it make itself. : )

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: NCHFP Website

Wow, thank you all so much! I have a really big stock pot already, so I'll stick to that for this year. It won't hold very many jars but I will be doing small batches anyway.

So peaches can also be canned using the water bath method? That is good to know.

Dawn, I had to laugh about your cookie analogy :) You make a very good point!

I'll find that Ball book and check out the other resources you all mentioned. Thanks so much!

Shelley

Get the jar picker upper too! And the funnel is invaluable.

Shelley,

The Ball Blue Book is available on the canning aisle of stores like Wal-Mart. It costs less than $10. Some stores have it on the canning aisle all year long, but others only stock canning supplies seasonally and have the BBB on the shelves roughly from February or March through the end of the summer.

I noticed that the Wal-Mart near us, which used to stock canning supplies seasonally, has had them on the shelves year-round for the last couple of years.

The latest BBB, which is their 100th Anniversary Edition, was published in 2009 and has a mostly yellow (peachy yellow!), blue and white cover featuring a jar of peaches, a jar of Walnut-Maple Syrup and a dish of Peach-Walnut Shortcake that includes both of those ingredients. I think it is the most beautiful cover the Ball Blue Book ever has had. Every time I look at that book cover, I have the urge to plant 4 more peach trees. (I have enough trees already, but those peaches look so good that it makes me want to grow more.)

Canning is ridiculously fun. I measure the success (or failure) of a given garden year on how many jars of something I was able to can, freeze and dehydrate. When you preserve some of your goodies for future meals, you allow yourself to enjoy the garden season (or at least its' results) all through the long, cold winter.

Usually there is a starter canning kit on the shelf there by the canning jars that includes a jar lid wand (although my old one from the early 1990s has a much better magnet on it than the ones they sell nowadays), a jar funnel, a jar lifter and the plastic bubble remover/headspace tool. They also have lots of other canning supplies, some of which are not strictly necessary.

I still use the Mrs. Wage's pickle mixes some years. It just depends on how much time I have and how much canning I'm doing. When I'm doing multiple batches in one day (I think my record for one day is eight batches, which is about 4 too many), the Mrs. Wage's premixed pickle mixes are so much faster than measuring out individual spices for each batch. The new Mrs. Wage's Zesty Bread and Butter Pickle Mix was an instant hit with our friends when I made one single batch of it for testing purposes a couple of years ago, so last year I made many batches of these pickles and we included those pickles in the gift bags of canned goodies we gave to friends (including our entire VFD), family and Tim's co-workers for Christmas. Those pickles were such a huge hit, and everyone thinks I'm a pickling genius. I'm not......but Mrs. Wage's is. Last year, as soon as the Mrs. Wage's mixes hit the store shelves in spring, I would buy 1 or 2 packages once a week and put them up in my pantry. Long before I had any cucumbers to pick and can, I had all the Zesty Bread and Butter Pickle mix I would need for the whole summer. I buy them early because once pickling season starts, those stay sold out here.

Dawn

Dawn, I have never seen the Spicy Pickle Mix in my store. I'll watch for it, and if it doesn't show up I will order some. I would probably love that one and I know Al and my son would.

Shelley..you need to make the habanero gold jelly. I have made it the last two Christmases for gifts at my sister's house. I had a number of requests for it again this year. Super easy. I bought all the ingredients, but you could grow the peppers. I did a photo spread of it if you are on facebook...I can share it with you.

Another thing to happily add to my 'must do' list this year: get to know Mrs. Wages. I'll start watching for it at the store.

Lisa, I agree with you on the hab gold jelly. Once you make some and share with friends, it becomes a frequently requested item. Would love to check out your posts about it. We've also been creating some blackberry hab jelly that hubby is very fond of as well. So many fruit possibilities, so little time.....

Carol, Whenever the pickle mixes show up in the stores, our Wal-Mart always has the Zesty Bread and Butter Mix right beside the dill and sweet pickle mixes. They never have it once pickling season starts, so I buy it early. I'll try to remember to come back here and holler "it's in the stores now!" when I see it on the shelves here.

If I were smarter, I'd order a case of it each winter and just not have to worry about finding it, but I hate to pay shipping for something I know the stores here do carry. And, when I go to the Mrs. Wage's website, I end up wanting to buy 1 of everything....and they have lots and lots of different mixes that you don't see here on store shelves

Lisa, I think Habanero Gold is the hands-down favorite of all our friends, but every now and then I skip making it for Christmas and give them something else. This was one of those years---they got the Zesty Bread and Butter Pickles instead of Habanero Gold. No one complained, but I am sure some of them are missing the Hab Gold. I'll probably make Habanero Cold for Christmas 2014.

Carsonsmimi, I bet the blackberry hab is good. I've made Peach-Hab, and Apple Hab before, and my sister loves Raspberry-Hab, so I need to figure out how to make that for her. The one she buys is $7 or $8 a jar.

I agree with your comment "so many fruit possibilities, so little time...."

Canning is addictive.

Now, I'll link the GW Harvest Forum thread featuring the Habanero Gold Big Batch recipe for anyone who might want to clip it and save it for use later this year. Or, if anyone has the big Ball Canning Book from about the 1990s that is 300 pages or so, the standard recipe (not the big batch one) is in that book.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Habanero Gold Big Batch Recipe Thread

Big Batch is a little bit of a misnomer in my book :) I think I get 6 or so jars out of it. I doubled the recipe and still made it twice this time.

Dawn, Glad you posted again because I was looking at the wrong one. I would like the Zesty Bread and Butter but I think Al and Eddie would like the spicy dill one better. Our WM usually has 3 pickles, salsa, and only a couple of others.

Lisa, I make the big batch, but I have always been told not to double a recipe for jelly. Do you not have trouble with the set?

Carsons mini, I have only used Mrs Wages for the last couple of years and I love them. I usually grow a 16 foot trellis of cucumbers and they produce well over a long period of time, but only enough for a few (usually 4 or 5) jars at a time. I can mix up the Mrs Wages, use what I need and put the remainder in the refrigerator and use it the next day or day after. I just use that mixture first, then mix a new batch. No worries about coming out even, coming up short, or throwing away leftovers. We like the taste of all of the pickles I have tried and it makes it super easy. I have made Bread and Butter, Dills, and Kosher Dills, and they were all good. Dawn, made me do it. LOL

I canned a lot of things in 2012 so I told my children they could pick a dozen jars each for themselves. I was going to Utah, and that daughter asked me to just mix hers up and bring different things. The others just picked salsa and pickles for their dozen. I make the same salsa that I have made for years and years and I'm not the big fan of Annie's Salsa that many people are, but the Habanero Gold Jam is my all time favorite.

Lisa, I agree with you that a Big Batch isn't all that big, but it does make twice as many jars as the original recipe, and with the same amount of pectin, making it a lot more cost effective at least.

When I am making multiple batches in one day (usually right around the peak of habanero harvest time), I often do all my dicing of the peppers, apricots, etc. and do many batches, putting them all in the fridge (the extra one in the garage, which makes so much of my canning a whole lot easier) to soak overnight. Then, early in the morning, I get up and finish each batch. To me, that's a lot more pleasant than starting early in the day with multiple batches, letting each soak in the sugar/vinegar solution for at least 6 hours, and then finishing up late in the day. I know it is the same amount of work either way, but breaking it into two days makes it seem shorter and easier (though each batch obviously takes just as long to make whether you do it in one day or two), or at least less tedious.

Carol, I have had trouble getting double batches of jam to jell, but not jelly....though I don't think I've tried to double many jelly recipes. Maybe I did it during the great peach harvest year of....well, whatever year that was....maybe 2010? I mostly follow the rules and they do say not to double batch jams and jellies.

If I am going to "make" you do something else, I need to make you make the NCHFP's recipe for hot pepper relish for Al. I use jalapenos, but since you can substitute any hot pepper for any other hot pepper in canning recipes, you could use your poblano peppers in a good year when you get a lot of them. I had the best ever poblano pepper year in 2013, and I doubt I'll ever get that kind of harvest of poblanos again. They usually produce poorly and late for me, and this year they were completely covered in flowers and fruit from July through November. I couldn't even keep them all picked consistently at their peak ripeness. The relish is wonderful.

I am giggling at all of us. It is far too early to even sow seeds, but that doesn't stop us from planning all the wonderful plants we're going to grow and the ways we're going to can the produce....right in the middle of January. The good thing is that January dreams come true in summer.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Hot Pepper Relish

Right now I only have done water bath canning. There are so many approved recipes I never stray. I am a rules kinda girl when it comes to food safety though. its my job lol. There are many tips but the one that comes to mind is follow the blue ball book. It is so user friendly, worth the money.

Dawn that is true! I dream a lot of green dreams in January. My FIL in Collinsville Tx calls me 2-3 times a week to tell me where he is at in the garden prep. he dreams too. He grows I can.
Kim

Hot Pepper Relish...woohoo....no wonder Al likes you so much. I will have to make that.

Kim, Dreams get us through the months of cold, windy, icky winter weather. Or, through the months of cold, windy, high-fire-danger weather, as the case may be.

Carol, I don't know why I never tried making hot pepper relish before. This fall, when we harvested the last of all the peppers before the first freeze, I had enough peppers for five batches of pepper relish, and still had plenty left over to can, roast, freeze, dehydrate etc.

I have at least one last jar of Habanero Gold hidden away in a dark corner of the pantry. I think I'm the only one who knows it is there. Today, Tim walked into the living room with one of our few remaining jars of salsa. You know, from my apparently not-so-secret "secret stash" intended only for our family. He told me he was taking it to work to give to someone who works for him. They enjoyed their Christmas salsa so much they told him they'd pay good money for another jar of it. Of course, he won't let them pay him for it, and I don't really mind that he took it.....but if we run out of salsa before I can make more in June, I'll remind him he gave away a jar from my secret stash and that it is his fault we've run out. I should move the rest of that part of my secret stash (I have a second secret stash that I think he's unaware of) to a new secret location. Some people hoard gold bars or chocolate bars or something. I hoard Annie's Salsa.

Dawn

We laugh about our canned food being like the widow's flour barrel, it just never seems to run out. Every week I am storing the empty jars coming out of the dishwasher, so I know we are using it, but we still seem to have lots of food left. Recently I have used apple butter, pickles, salsa, jam, and apples from home canning, onions that are still good from the last harvest, peppers and asparagus from the freezer, etc.

I didn't have much of a garden this year so I didn't have much to can. I did about 3 bushels of apples from my son's tree, then along came other stuff, and I just had to do it. We ate lots of fresh cucumbers and peppers, and I froze a lot of sweet pepper, but I only had one hot pepper plant this year. That makes Al a little nervous when I don't plant the Thai chili seed that George gave me. I dry them and grind them up and he sprinkles them on everything he eats....well almost everything. The fact that I didn't grow any means little, since I bought habs from the Mexican market for Hab Gold, and even now I have pablanos and jalapenos in the refrigerator. If I used the frozen sweets from my freezer, I could almost make that relish now. LOL I guess I have just never looked at that recipe before, and now I want to try it soon. Is it like fire, or just pleasantly hot? If you tell me that it is hot, but you like it, then I'm OK with that. If you tell me that Tim thinks it is hot, then I may not be OK with it, and just have to feed it to Al. LOL

You can adjust the heat, the recipe gives the adjustment. I don't think it is hot hot....and you normally serve it over cream cheese, so that cuts the heat as well. I used frozen sweet peppers last year and frozen habs this year without any problem. One batch this year I was afraid I didn't have enough heat and so l left some of the seeds in... that was my hottest batch.

Oops...sorry, Carol, thought you asked about the heat of the jelly :)

Lisa, I could eat Hab Gold with a spoon (like seedmama), but everything is better with cream cheese. LOL I like Hab Gold and cream cheese on a Whole Wheat Ritz. My fav.

Whoohoo. Homeland had Philly cream cheese on sale for 1.29! And here I sit with all these jars of recently made hab gold jelly. What is a girl to do?

Carol, thanks for sharing your idea about keeping the pickle mixture in the frig. In my little suburban backyard, I don't grow near the volume like some on the forum. I'll definitely remember your suggestion this summer if I'm lucky enough to get a good crop of cucs.

Magnet? You need/use a magnet when canning?

Never have myself. Only thing I can think it is good for, is to pull the lids out of the boiling water.

Is that what you use it for?

Moni

yes it is a lot easier than tongs. I am not very good with tongs anyway so this makes it better for me. I didn't know about that trick until a couple years ago and I bought a bunch of stuff on clearance. It was in the ball kit .
kim

Carol, It is fairly hot, although the heat is moderated by the fact that so much of it is sweet peppers. It isn't so hot that I cannot eat it and I am a medium-hot pepper eater. I don't care for eating something like habaneros straight off the vine, though I love them in Habanero Gold. Much depends on how hot your hot peppers are. I grow a blend of jalapenos that have Scoville Heat Unit Ratings ranging from 2,000 or 3,000 SHU to 8,000 to 10,000 SHU. I can regulate, to some extent, how hot the pepper relish is just by choosing jalapenos with a higher or SHU rating. (Clearly this means that when I harvest, I have to harvest each variety separately, and it also explains why I label each and every jalapeno pepper plant.) Also, in a very hot and dry summer, you know, the heat can be much more intense in hot peppers. So, if you are trying to keep your pepper relish a little less hot, use peppers grown either in a cooler, milder summer or use the ones from the first harvest of the season.

The jalapenos from my first harvest of any given year, which usually occurs soon after about June 10-15, usually are not as hot as the ones I harvest in July or August, since they formed, grew and matured in generally wetter, cooler weather. If I wanted to make a milder hot pepper relish, I'd use those....even if I had to chop them up and freeze them and wait for enough sweet bells to be ripe.

Tim, for the record, generally doesn't think any pepper or pepper product is too hot, except for raw habaneros. I did make a triple-hot Habanero Gold pepper version once that is too hot for him and almost everyone else who tries it. A co-worker of his who is from a Caribbean nation where they love lots of hot, hot, hot stuff did think the Triple X Habanero Gold was wonderful, as did her son.

Remember that all peppers are interchangeable in tested canning recipes that include peppers since they fall in a similar pH range so you could replace some of the hot peppers with an equivalent amount of sweet ones to reduce the heat.

Because Pepper Relish requires 10 cups of peppers per batch, to me it seems like the perfect end-of-the-garden-season recipe. During the peak harvest/canning season in summer, I am using lots of peppers while making Annie's Salsa, Jalapeno Rings and Candied Jalapenos. So, in order to have enough peppers to make those routinely every week or so, I'd rather wait and make Jalapeno Relish at the end of the summer because that's normally when I have a huge bunch of sweet peppers available---when I strip the plants right before the first killing freeze.

Last year I made a list of what I wanted to can. It included Annie's Salsa (needed to make at least 50 jars), Candied Jalapenos (needed to make at least 100 jars), and Zesty Bread and Butter Pickles (needed to make at least 100 jars). I achieved those goals, but most of those were given away as gifts, so in order to make me happy this year, I need to can twice as much. I also canned oodles of dill pickles as spears and slices, regular bread and butter pickles, sweet pickle relish and dill pepper relish. After all that, and with jars of canned goods hidden in every nook and cranny of the house, the last thing I needed to do was to make 5 batches of Pepper Relish......but you've got to use the harvest you produced, so I did. Someday Tim will retire and won't be carrying boxes and boxes of gift bags to work every Christmas, and I'll be able to can 25% of what I can now and it will be plenty.

I think of our pantry as an endless pantry or a bottomless pantry because even when I think we've used up all Blueberry-Lime Jam, or Annie's Salsa, or Candied Jalapenos or whatever else, if I get in there and look long enough, I'll find some jars of what I need. We rarely run completely out of one item before I'm canning more of it. Still, I need a bigger pantry so I can store it all together. Lots of the stuff goes into plastic underbed storage boxes with snap-on lids. Those are the ones I pull out and carry downstairs when it is time to put together the gift bags. So, the holiday season doesn't empty out my regular pantry as much as I think it will---it just depletes my overflow storage area.

I do go in and remove everything from the pantry and reorganize it once harvest time is approaching, so that the oldest canned food is moved to the front of the pantry where it will be used first. I also put the date on each jar so I know which jars are the older ones.

Carson'smimi, Well, of course, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. Sounds to me like one girl needs to eat some Habanero Gold and cream cheese on crackers.

I keep the Mrs. Wage's mix in the fridge too for a few days in between batches. I usually put it in plastic Ball Freezer Jam/Jelly Jars so my family knows what it is and leaves it alone.

Moni, Yes, you use the lid wand with a magnet on the end of it to lift the lids out of the hot water and put them on top of the jars. I have three of them from various kits bought over the years. After we moved here, we stuck the box of canning stuff (unintentionally) up in the attic and then I had to buy a whole new set of canning utensils in order to can that year. When we got the Christmas decorations down out of the attic, we found the old canning utensils, so I had two sets. The one from the late 1980s or early 1990s is a sort of turquoise blue, the one from the late 1990s is red, and the third one (I don't remember why I bought it---or maybe it was a gift) is dark blue. My favorite one is the older one because the magnet in that set is super-strong.

I need for us to add on a big canning pantry off the laundry room so I can store all my canning items together, along with all the canned goods. Unfortunately, our list of things 'to do' to the house is long and we are really slow about getting around to doing them. By the time we finally get around to adding a canning pantry, Tim will be retired and I'll be canning a lot less since he won't be sharing canned goods with all his coworkers after he retires, and we won't need a big canning pantry. The empty canning jars do pile up and I store them in the same underbed storage boxes after they have been emptied out at Christmas time. Sometimes I store the empty jars in Rubbermaid storage containers in the tornado shelter or in the garage....just wherever I can find a place to stash them. I also have 10 or 12 cases of jelly jars (new and unopened) stacked up in the guest room closet. There's barely a room in this house that doesn't have canning stuff stashed away in every spare corner of a closet, cabinet or shelf. Whenever I see canning supplies on clearance (and sometimes they pop up at odd times---like mixed in with Christmas clearance), I grab them. It is amazing how they'll discount last year's jars or lids merely because the new supply has arrived.

MRS'S WAGES MIX ALERT: Yesterday I checked the canning aisle at our local Wal-Mart. They had just put out all the Mrs. Wage's Mixes. They had several kinds for pickles (but not the Zesty Bread and Butter Pickles), salsa, and spiced peaches, as well as pickling salt, pickling lime, pectin, etc.

NEWBIE ALERT: If you've never canned before and you need canning salt, you will get a larger amount for a lower price if you buy it on the spice/baking aisle and not the canning aisle. It is the same canning salt, just from a different manufacturer.

And, if you're going to make pickles, it is cheaper to buy your spices in bulk from someone like Pendery's instead of buying the pickling spice blend or Mrs. Wage's mixes. Sometimes in a big pickle year I do that. The best time to buy anything I need for canning is in spring because by summer, the stores stay sold out of almost everything.

Now that we've discussed pickling and canning so much, I need to go back and look at my grow list, and make sure I included enough of the tomatoes and peppers needed to make lots of what we can every year on top of having all those veggies to eat fresh too.

Dawn

I also have canning things stashed everywhere. My plan was to have home canned goods in only 2 places, so I could keep the years separate but that isn't working very well. My oldest stuff didn't run out before I needed the space again. Last week we had oatmeal sweetened with apple butter, and waffles with apple butter instead of syrup, and I think I used it on something else. I am determined to get that cabinet emptied.

I have always dreamed of having a summer kitchen, and I have convinced my son and DIL that it's a good thing. LOL One of the things that I included in my design project for my Permaculture Design Certificate, was to design a project kitchen as a separate building with a large propane stove for canning, stainless steel tables as work surfaces, concrete floor with drains for easy cleaning, a small lean-to greenhouse on the south end with a rock wall in between and a small wood stove in the kitchen to heat the wall when needed with the stove pipe between the double faced wall. Lots of windows that open wide, and a grill and smoker on the outside patio and water catchment from the roof. It would serve as a place to clean vegetables, fish and small animals and have everything required to cook for a large group of 'outdoor' guests. I included underground cooling pipes, and a large pantry for canning equipment. It was fun to put my dreams on paper. I had used my son's property as my design property, and they both loved the prep kitchen and hope to build it someday.

bump - I found some of the Zesty Bread and Butter pickle mixes in Wal-Mart.