Canning Days

I’m only working two days this week, in part because the next few weeks will be very busy, but also because it is canning season. I can’t imagine being a teacher now– right when all the work has to be done!

This morning I started by digging up the rest of the potatoes, whose vines died quickly in the last two weeks. These plants were the La Ratte potatoes, a gourmet French fingerling, and I pay dearly for the seed potatoes each spring through Seed Savers. When I had my gopher problem, and as I was spraying and picking off Colorado potato beetles and hoppers, I was considering scaling down my potato bed significantly next year. Was it really worth it?

Last year I had a horrible harvest. The potato bed was in its first year, and though it had been plowed twice and I’d added compost, it was still very compressed, clay-like dirt. Then with the drought, yields of everything were low. I harvested only 14 lbs of potatoes, even though I’d planted probably five pounds of seed potatoes on a long row. Sure, I got back more potatoes than I’d planted. But I had something much bigger in mind.

This year I amended the soil with lots of peat moss and vermiculite and when I hilled, I used a mix of hay, peat and lighter compost, not the dirt I’d dug from the trench. I also didn’t hill as much.

And I must say the results were phenomenal. Though I fretted about what was going on under the ground, and the weeds (mostly grass) were insane, making me once again think about abandoning this bed, there is nothing like success to make one commit to another year of gardening! This morning I went down the row and filled the large bucket (8 gallon?) to the brim– 38.5 lbs (last year I couldn’t even get the regular scale to register them). These things sell in little bags at Trader Joe’s for $3/bag. I’m feeling quite wealthy in potatoes. With the potatoes I harvested earlier (red, Yukon Gold and Kennebec), I easily grew 45-50 lbs of potatoes this year. Now that’s what I’m talking about!! We won’t starve this winter!

It always takes a bit to get back in the rhythm of canning. At first I have to get my head around the equipment. I have to get out the canner, and the big pot, and the lids, jars, and bands, and find the special funnel and tongs, and all of it has to be at different levels of clean/hot/sanitized. Then I have to have enough produce to make it worthwhile, and things come in slowly at first– but are so nice and ripe and tender!

I practice with jam, which is actually the easiest to cope with, although I had some problems with gelling this year. I did end up getting a batch of tomatillo-lime jam that is absolutely perfect and tastes like lime marmalade. Really good.

Then I move on to pickles. And oh yeah, you have to scrub and soak the cucumbers overnight in ice water and allum (but not leave them in there too long). And for the sweet pickles, you have to let the cukes layered with salt, onions and ice cubes sit for 90 minutes before making a batch. Oh yeah, and why didn’t I buy celery seed earlier because now the other canners have completely bought out the stock at Coborn’s (thank goodness we now have bulk at the Co-op). And for the tomatillo sauce, oh yeah, you have to blanch the tomatillos. So it’s always getting out extra pots and pans and it takes a while.

But by the time I’m on my second batch of salsa, I have it down. Everything is organized and within reach, and the big bowls of tomatoes are coming in, and the food processor is doing its thing, and I’m back and forth to the grill with hot pad, spoon and tongs… then the boiling down on the stove in the cast iron pan, into the jars which I washed while the simmering was happening, and voila! Five pints at a time!

Today, in the midst of salsa (yellow and red) and pickles (dill and sweet), I took care of a quart of tomatoes (which I swear each year I won’t can again) and went ahead and pickled some of the smaller zucchini I had on the counter. And when harvesting, I did a fairly good job of prioritizing and stayed away from the tomatillos, which would have sent me in another direction… After looking seriously at the beans, thinking there was just enough for two jar of Dilly beans, I put them in the fridge to be eaten fresh (it’s not that many beans, and I don’t really like pickles if truth be told).

So now I’m ready. When those Romas are good and ripe and ready to go, I’ll be ready for them, with my boiling water, tongs, lemon juice and salt at the ready…

… I just have to run to Fleet Farm for another dozen jars! I hope I don’t have to fight anyone for them… they often sell out and are left only with large-mouth jars, which suck. A few years ago I almost took a box off someone’s industrial-size cart when she wasn’t looking– she had all of them, like 10 dozen! I figured if I got caught I could pretend I thought it was for restocking the now-empty shelf.

Still on the docket for canning: tomatillo sauce, pepper sauce (OMG, you should see the paprika peppers), sweet relish (if I get enough cucumbers) and tomatoes. But no more salsa (step away from the chipotle in adobo).