actual comprehensive canning notes last year

[JRinPA]

Canned my first batch for the summer today, and it made me think about marking it this year.

Last year, for the first time, I kept a fairly accurate canning record. I made it a spreadsheet with the following rows, then one column per batch.
Date
Batch#
# of Jars/size
Food source
headspace
canning time
# of seal failures
Description 5 fields
Remarks 5 fields
Follow up- taste or etc

From 7/23 through 12/26 I have batch 2201 through 2229. But I'm pretty sure I was still canning deer after that, at least scrap for dogs.
date batch some description+remarks

7/23 2201 10 q beets (pressure canned nothing added)
7/25 2202 14 half pints of rhubarb jam (remarks too small do pints next time)
8/12 2203 14 q beets (the canner is a 23 qt so only does 7q, so this means I canned successive batches all called 2203)
8/14 2204 10 q beets
8/22 2205 7 q pear sauce from drops
8/23 2206 7 q of pizza sauce Cost Gen 1st pick
8/24 2207 7 q pizza sauce Big Beef Estiva Fauxpice
8/25 2208 7 q pizza sauce Fauxpice Stump few CG
8/27 2209 7q pickup pearsauce 4 trays
8/28 2210 7q pizza sauce 4 brother tomatoes 1 seal failure, NEW LID but jar had 2 little chips in rim
9/02 2211 7q beets
9/02 2212 7q beets Found another NEW WIDE MOUTH jar from walmart with defects in rim
9/05 2213 7q pickup pear sauce
9/05 2214 7q pickup pear sauce
9/07 2215 6q soup1 tomato source - all
9/07 2216 6q 1p soup 1
9/13 2217 5q 4p soup 3 nice CG and FP --stalled juicer doing celery - chop celery first, don't chip it!
9/15 2218 7q pickup pears NEW BALL WIDE MOUTH another Omega 23 rim error jar
9/15 2219 6q 1p pickup pears 3 qts of juice in fridge from these 2 batches (I got buzzed off that a month or so later)
9/20 2220 7 q pizza sauce 1 failure excess siphoning canner water was red, cooked down pretty thick and left overnight before canning, absolutely fantastic - fruity and sweet and garlic and basil - pizza sauce may be too thick to pressuce can at times.

9/28 2221 10p jalapenos 20 min steam recipe from godawgs calls for 15 water bath
10/16 2222 9 jars p and hp roasted sauce 1
10/23 2223 13 p roasted sauce 2
11/01 2224 10p jalapenos steam canned 10 min w pressure seal up then 20 in more
11/14 2225 7q deer scrap for dogs (actually plenty good for people too)
a few rounds of deer meat (busy time no time to describe I guess)
12/25 2228 (I guessed on the number) 7 q deer stew deer meat in botom garlic parsnips turnip potatoes carrrots with variation on beef stock veg stock salt and pepper Follow up - hold the parsnips...
12/26 2229 7 q 2 cans soup 5 cans dog meat 1 unmatched lid on soup did not seal

My numbering system leaves a bit to be desired, with the current year at 22...it gets a little...too many numbers all under 30. I should have went with A as the first recording year and just made it A01 A02 and then this year it will be B01 B02.

[GoDawgs]

You got a lot of stuff put up! I have beet envy now since I can't get the darned things to grow here. If I could, a lot of those beets would be made into pickled beets on an as needed basis!

The canning log here has date (incl year), the product canned, jar size, quantity and a space for notes. A modified version sits on a clipboard where the canned stuff is stored and every time something is removed for use the quantity gets changed. I think Pickles inventories those about twice a year as there's usually a time of two when marking something off has been forgotten.

This year we're making a good effort to write in the notes space how many jars of whatever are left on the shelf when the first canning of the same happens this year. That will give a feel for how many jars of whatever actually get used in a year. Also in Notes might be a comment about crop failure as a reason for lack of something canned, or higher than normal use of something the year before and the reason why.

[JRinPA]

Beets are probably the best companion/intercrop that I've seen for growing here. They grow under most anything tall and get a decent crop. They can go in here for at least another month, month and a half, for a strong fall crop. I've only put a single row in so far this year, and just a couple weeks back, between a double row of corn.

We still had three five gal buckets of beets saved over the winter, packed in peat moss, that never got used. I was done canning them, for sure. The buckets lasted a while but I'm sure it was when the basement warmed up that they started going bad. So yeah, it was too many. And somewhat hard to give away, as a lot of people really don't like red beets, even already picked and free.

[GoDawgs]

The weather here is the problem. Beets just won't take the wild temp swings in the spring or the fall and it's way too hot in the summer. I've tested just about every starting time frame looking for a sweet spot to grow beets but there just aren't any.

[JRinPA]

I will sell you 3 beets for $2.48. That was the price at walmart two years back! Save 50% on inflation. Shipping is extra.

[GoDawgs]

I will sell you 3 beets for $2.48. That was the price at walmart two years back! Save 50% on inflation. Shipping is extra.

When I see ridiculous prices like that I just keep walking past them. There is no vegetable that I'll pay a lot for unless I need it for a new recipe I found that I absolutely want to try. Even then I might set the recipe aside for later in the year when that out of season veggie comes back down to earth.

For years I passed by leeks. Around here only Walmart sells them. Their leeks have at most 2" of white area and they want $3-4 for a bundle of three. Nope! The grower never hilled them, turning a fast buck on a buyer who probably had no clue about what leeks should look like. That's why a couple years ago I played with growing my own. Success! And I hilled them, getting about 6" of nice white leek. Probably could have gotten more white but growing them down the sides of a raised bed limits the amount of soil available to pull up when something else is growing in the middle of the bed.

[JRinPA]

Are leeks something I should be growing? It sounds like shellfish...I never even think twice about it.

[GoDawgs]

Are leeks something I should be growing? It sounds like shellfish...I never even think twice about it.

LOL! I love it!

I admit to being a prepper who lives in a part of the country where onions don't store well. They also bolt a lot and become ruined due to the spring temp swings here Being an onion lover I started growing leeks a few years ago as an onion substitute in case the SHTF (S*** Hits The Fan). Actually I tried leeks a couple decades ago but never had any success with them so gave up. As time went on and my gardening knowledge increased, I got good at growing scallions using plants I grew from seed. About two years ago it hit me that if I can grow scallions there's no reason I can't grow leeks, their larger cousins. The stubborn streak in me got up and running and now I can grow some nice leeks and it really didn't take much to do that except paying attention to some basic growing techniques. Actually, I treated them just like I do scallions.

So now we come to why I should keep growing them. Fall planting, spring harvest here. I'm still not used to having them in the garden so I forget a lot to go get some to incorporate them into meals. They're great chopped and added to dishes that simmer and good sliced lengthwise and roasted with other veg like potatoes. Milder than onions. More leek recipes have been found and saved to try next spring. Leek and potato soup comes to mind.

I have realized though that I don't need two 18' rows of them; one will do. I was trialing two varieties for comparison. To eventually make way for other later things scheduled for their garden spot I ended up pulling a bunch, chopping and freezing them this spring. And I probably need to do a small cluster of them in an out of the way spot so that they can set seed for collection. Have I used a lot of the frozen ones? Hardly. I might have to ditch some to make way for the corn that's almost ready.

Should you grow leeks? If you've never thought about them, you probably don't need to devote garden space to them. If you're just curious about them, sure. Why not? Nothing like a good experiment to enable one to say "been there, done that". Like maybe next year I'll finally get around to see how growing a few artichoke plants goes.