Posted on 09/13/2013 1:04:36 PM PDT by greeneyes
Trim ends off green beans. Combine salt, vinegar and water in a large saucepot. Bring to a boil. Pack beans lengthwise into hot jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Add 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper, 1 clove garlic and 1 head dill to each pint jar. Add Pickle Crisp to each jar, if desired. Ladle hot liquid over beans, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Remove air bubbles. Adjust two-piece caps. Process pints 10 minutes in boiling water canner.
I want them to taste as much like regular green beans as I can so I want to leave out the dill/garlic/cayenne. Is that okay due to it is the vinegar, salt and water that makes them safe for water bath canning (the vinegar content raises them to higher acid).
The lady from Cannery Row is fast asleep in the other room but she put up many pint jars of Dilly Beans every year and they were Good Eats. I’m making a note to ask her your question in the morning...
About 10 years ago , I found walking onions growing wild in a clearing in the woods.
Obviously , someone had planted them there several years ago.
Learn and observe what they can and can't ( or won't do )
Johnny has the right idea by introducing minerals and plaster that will add nutrients to the soil, as well as breaking topsoil up
You could do much the same by adding the contents of your old soil bags and integrating it into the soil where it won't get baked by the sun.
Add mulch , old leaves , compost , or old kitchen vegetable waste , and consider it an experiment !! Keep your bagged vegetables garden , but expand your horizon as an experiment arround the North and East side of the patio .
Aged horse poop ( over one year old ) is good fertilizer. Fresh Horse poop is "too hot" (too high in nitrogen) and will kill fresh plants. In Northern colder climes , fresh horse poop is used under glass ( Cold Frames)to maintain heat and temperature
for late Fall/ winter season and early spring to over-winter plants .
Fresh horse is known for nitrogen and heat production.
Aged cow is known for gentler , gradual nitrogen release, and soil amendments, and breaking up hard /clay topsoil, or addes to sandy soils .
I'm not growing in the dirt garden, only in containers. I can't bend down to the ground dirt over and over or I can't walk the next day - L4 and L5 lower back have no cushion left. I can't deal with ground dirt - it kills plants with the insects, mold, and other crap in it - a pox on ground dirt. Everything I planted in ground dirt died due to insects, birds, and squirrels and the Texas sun baking them to death. I will plant several White Fuseau Sunflowers in the ground dirt and that's it and if they die, they die. They have edible tubers so they have to be in the ground, not containers.
My deck is large and my ground dirt area is not. I'm putting potted flower plants on top of the dirt garden to get butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds in there so they can pollinate the veggies on the deck.
For sanils and slugs :
place a pie plate at soil level
place stale beer in the pie plate
The beer will give off an aroma of fermentation that slugs and snails like
They will die intoxicated and happy by drowning in the beer
Do not reccomend to Johnny , as he will get pi$$ed at the waste of good or stale beer !
That would be my understanding. The pickle crisp is just to keep them from being mushy ie more crisp with than with out.
These beans will not taste like regular green beans, due to the high vinegar content which is necessary for the water bath canning.
If you want regular green beans, and you don’t want to pressure cook them, freezing them or dehydrating them would give you something closer to that.JMHO.
Freezing is easy. After cleaning and snapping the beans, you steam them for 3 minutes, then plunge them into ice cold water to stop the cooking. Put them in freezer bags in your freezer and use as desired.
Okay, since you'be both rceommended beer for snails..
Do you think they would go for ale? I have some Anchor Brewing Company Christmas Ale from last year.
I believe the ale would work too , as slugs / snails aren't all that selective
The key factors are:
#1 to place the pie pan at soil level for ease of entry, and
#2 that there is enough depth of beer to drown the critters as they get intoxicated.
“These beans will not taste like regular green beans, due to the high vinegar content which is necessary for the water bath canning.”
The reason I am learning to grow food is due to the SHTF. No power. Not freezing, not drying in this humid area. With no power, the dried food would get hot and humidity would be high so it wouldn’t last long.
I know the green beans won’t taste like regular green beans when they come out of the jar, but I’ll change that somewhat and it will be easier to do without the spices, et. in the jar. I’ll find a way to do that.
Another question for you: When do you use cider vinegar and white vinegar and why?
Found it - how to remove vinegar taste from green beans canned in water bath.
Take beans out of jar. Rinse. Leave in water overnight with a bit of soda added to the water. Use as fresh beans. I saw another one that suggested after the soaking, cook them with a cube of beef bullion (or teaspoon of granules) added to water. That sounds good.
Another question is, this Tromboncino Squash plant is within 6 inches of being four feet tall, that is the top of the stand for it. It's tendrils have latched onto those plastic rings and it is solid strong in there.
How tall does squash get before they produce flowers and squash? There is no hint of flowers on it yet. It is a squash so I would think it should behave as most squash plants. Oh, I remember, you don't grow squash. Darn.
Could any of you who grow squash give me some idea when to expect flowers on this squash?
Answer: Whenever you are canning stuff that doesn’t have enough acidity for water bath canning, you need to add something to increase the acidity.
For most recipes this is Vinegar, (White or Apple Cider)or bottled lemon juice (usually for tomatoes). I use white or apple cider more or less interchangeably-whatever I happen to have on hand.
There are subtle differences in taste with the 2 vinegars, and of course the liquid will be a different color: so either go by the recipes in the Ball Book, or by your own preference.
bfl
See #274 for the vinegar question.
Well, I understand your motivation, but you do eat green beans now don’t you? While I am canning lots of stuff, I am also using other methods for immediate use-so I try to give a complete overview.
Frozen green beans supposedly can be more nutritious, and I use it for a quick solution when I have just a few more beans than I need for a canning batch. If SHTF-frozen stuff is eaten first.
As to the humidity, I would think that if you dehydrated the beans with a machine, or oven(solar or wood etc) and then packaged the bags with a desicant, that would be doable, and take up less space. In a pinch, I have used rice as a desicant and it has worked here-might not in Texas.
In my situation, living on the New Madrid fault line, I actually think that some dehydrated stuff is a necessity, since the glass canning jars can break. We have lots of humidity in Missouri, but I guess it is nothing like Texas.
In the end, it’s all what works best for you and your goals in your environment.
I thought soaking them might work, but wasn’t sure. I figure just eating the dilly beans out of the jar would be a good option too.
I used that recipe in the Ball Book and made a batch of dilly beans, but we haven’t tried it yet.
I use beef bouillion/base or ham base when I cook green beans. I also like garlic and onions added sometimes.
/johnny
Ok. So give us the details. What were the components and methodology?
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