Well, last night I put up my first beans in my new pressure canner. It was an exciting and somewhat terrifying experience! Fortunately, I bought a very very good pressure canner from Lehman's so I wasn't worried about it exploding (much). I've made lots of jelly before, but had never tried beans or anything else that you need a pressure canner for, so it was an interesting experiment. I put up 6 pint jars of green beans from the garden, and learned a LOT about my new pressure canner.

Now I know what the "jiggle" sounds like when you're at the right pressure, that when you're above 3000 feet you need to cook it longer and at a higher pressure, that it's okay that the overpressure valve steams at low pressures, how long it takes to heat up and cool, and that you can't go off and forget to open the thing once it's cooled off or the lid gets very very stuck.

Now I'm much more confident about using my pressure canner! We got the one with the metal-to-metal seal so we didn't have to worry about buying gaskets... but the overpressure rubber valve in the top still has to be replaced every few years. It's always something! I've been stockpiling canning lids, now I guess I should get a couple spare valves too.

The second bed of potatoes is almost ready to dig (I still have a big box of the Caribe purple-skinned ones in the pantry), the sweet corn is coming, we got our first 2 tomatoes the other day, the onions are starting to fall over and bulb up, the French Rolande bush green beans are at full steam (and in jars! wow!), the strawbs have been faster than the pillbugs this year (mostly) and I have a lot in the freezer to make mixed berry jelly with, we picked wild elderberries the other day and made jam, I can't keep up with the eggplant (just 6 plants), and the pumpkins are almost ready to harvest. Tomorrow I think we'll go down the road and pick wild blackberries near the pond. That and some fresh-baked bread will make a nice Lammas supper. 8-)

This is the most food I've ever gotten from my garden, and next year we hope to double or triple the size of it. If there's one thing that'll keep you going in a Depression, it's having food on the table no matter what. And the price of your own food from your own garden will never go up.

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Posted by Anonymous

I am jeleous. My garden didn't produce anything this year. Sounds like you are going to have a wonderful Lammas dinner tonight. Enjoy


Brightest blessings

Heather(easternprariegirl)

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Posted by MrsBurns

I followed the link to Caribe potatoes....thanks. I hadn't heard of them and was wondering where I could get come organic seed potatoes for later this year. Although they are sold out of everything I looked at.....I'll post a question and see when they expect to have more.
DeniseB

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