I bought quite a few of my seeds in the larger sizes offered, either ounce packets or 1/4 pound packets depending on the seed. Since those would last me a long time, I didn’t want to leave them in the packets to get beat up, dirty, torn, and dumped. Instead I organized everything in jars I’d gotten free on craigslist or saved from store bought food.

These are all the varieties I plan to grow this year: love lies bleeding amaranth, anise hyssop, cherokee trail of tears pole bean, hidatsa shield pole bean, blue lake bush bean, lettuce leaf basil, chioggia beet, calabrese green sprouting broccoli, deja vu calendula, borage, early jersey wakefield cabbage, muscade carrot, giant of naples cauliflower, giant prague celeriac, german chamomile, rainbow chard, chives, cockscomb, rainbow inca sweet corn, pickling cucumbers, bouquet dill, echinacea, lista de gandia eggplant, fenugreek, feverfew, kale, ornamental kale, lavender, early white vienna kohlrabi, rock top mix lettuce, gem marigold, golden jenny melon, sugar baby watermelon, nasturtium, pitres dwarf okra, oregano, parsley, alaska shelling pea, california wonder bell pepper, daikon (radish), new zealand spinach, black beauty zucchini squash, patty pan squash, spaghetti squash, straightneck squash, st johns wort, hidatsa #1 sunflower, jersey giant (paste) tomato, viola, purple cherokee (slicing) tomato

Since this is quite a few years worth for my little homestead, I’ve been keeping them in the fridge to extend their storage life a bit.

How to you organize and store your seeds?

My winter canning is winding down. But I wanted to get in one more batch of beans. These are the last of my home grown dry beans. The only one you can pick out in the picture is the dark Cherokee Trail of Tears. The rest were Mayflower Pole, Purple Podded Pole, and Old Homestead.

Of the beans I’ve tried so far, Cherokee Trail of Tears, Old Homestead, and Pinto were all pretty equally productive. I’ve decided to go ahead with Cherokee Trail of Tears (black) and a new one, Hidatsa Shield (white with a brown/tan belly) this year.

I used the recipe from the Ball Complete Book for Apple Pie Filling. I found a copy of the recipe here if you don’t have the book. I used about half Gala and half McIntosh just because those were the ones on sale. I didn’t blanch my apples like they suggest though, but rather followed a method of using lemon in my soaking water to keep them from browning.

I peeled the fruit, then peeled each segment. I was told the better job you do getting down to the “meat” of the fruit, the better they will turn out. Citrus can be packed raw into your hot jars and covered with water or syrup. I went with a medium syrup for mine to start and will adjust next time if this is too sweet. Then they are just water bath canned for 10 minutes. My 15 fruit yielded 5 quarts. If you want to try this yourself, there is a more in-depth tutorial over at pickyourown that you can follow here.

There are lots of new posts that were imported in during the move, so lots to catch up on if you weren’t following me on the new domain. I’ve done a pretty good job of learning new skills and ramping up food production here.

For now though, we are covered in a blanket of snow. So I wanted to share a picture I snapped this week of the oregano peeking through.

I also have heard people commonly say that they freeze produce in fall when the harvest gets ahead of them, and can it at their leisure during the winter. This is an example of one item from my freezer…this is veggie broth made from veggie scraps I’d been throwing in the freezer.

I have two winter fruits I’m planning to can as well.  Hopefully I’ll have a new post up about them soon

Some of my friends were using a method where all you do is pour 1/2 cup of dry beans into your hot pint jars and top off with boiling water to 1 inch headspace.

They are processed in a pressure canner at 11 pounds for 75 minutes. For quarts you’d use one cup of dry beans and process for 90 minutes.

Starting with dry beans produces beans that are still firm out of the can, so they don’t get over cooked when you use them in a recipe.

I went ahead and did 3 batches: chickpeas, black beans, and pintos. You can see the water level on the pintos and black beans are lower. That’s because I stared with a recommendation of 2/3 cup of dry beans per jar. For the last batch of chickpeas I reduced the amount to a rounded 1/2 cup and you can see much less liquid was absorbed for a nicer level.

UPDATED: I’ve had several questions about the cost of home canning dry beans. Here’s my calculation:

At Aldi’s, I got 2 pound bags of pintos for $1.49. That’s 75 cents a pound. Each pound is about 2 cups, so I could make 4 pints with it. That means these cost me 19 cents per pint.

In my case, that is the only expense because I am using reusable lids. You could add about 10 cents each if you are using standard lids. Pints are a bit larger than store bought cans.

And I’ll end with a little view of my kitchen, all prepped and ready to can.