Canning Green Beans

As some of you know we expanded the garden this year in the hopes of having more veggies to can. When mom came to visit on Thursday she checked out the green beans and announced that there were some that were ready to can and that we were going to do it on Sunday. So mom showed up around 10 this morning and we started, mom did most of the picking since I am not supposed to bend over or do too much after my surgery. I have never canned green beans before and must say it was much easier that I thought.


Here are the beans we picked today. According to mom these little boxes are each 1 peck (I have no idea why canning using such strange measurements, for example a peck and a bushel). For green beans each peck usually yields 4 quarts.


Melville wanted to check out the beans, he kept trying to drag some off to play with. Don't worry we cleaned them very well.


These is one peck after the ends were snapped off and they were snapped into pieces.



After the beans are snapped we washed them off. I don't have pictures of putting them into the jars because I was helping and mom wasn't taking photos. After the beans are cleaned you put them into the jars with 1 teaspoon of salt, then cover them with water. After covering them with water you wipe the edge off and place the lids and seals on them.



Then we put them in the pressure cooker (you can do 4 quarts in my moms). You set the pound pressure at 10 and once it reaches the pressure you cook them for 25 minutes. The cats thought it was really interesting because it was making noise.



Once they are done cooking you turn the heat off and have to let the pressure release (normally about 30-45 minutes). Here is mom using her special tool to remove the quart jars. After you pull the jars out you can hear the lids pop, which signals they have sealed.


Here are the 8 quarts we canned today. We had enough to do another 2-3 quarts, but didn't want to can for another 2 hours, so we split the rest and will cook them for dinner in the next few days.