Pressure Canning Whole Beans - recipe

If you have ever been interested in wanting to try pressure canning, beans are a good place to start! They are so easy. Buying dry beans is much cheaper than buying canned beans, and by canning them yourself you get the best of both worlds, convenience and money savings!

After you have all of your supplies ready, it's time to get the pinto beans ready. 

Canning BEANS!

1) Wash your bean. Sometimes beans have small rocks in them so I sort them in a colander or strainer, this is a good time to give them a good rinse while your at it.
2) Clean and sterilize your cans and lids.
3) For preparing your beans you have 2 options. 1) Place dry beans or peas in a large pot and cover with water. Soak 12 to 18 hours in a cool place. Then drain. OR you can
2) Cover beans with boiling water in a saucepan. Boil 2 minutes, remove from heat and soak 1 hour. Then drain.
**Then cover beans soaked by either method with fresh water and boil 30 minutes.**4) For pints use 3/4 cup of beans and 1/2 tsp of salt. For quarts use 1 1/4 cups of dry beans and 1 tsp of salt.
5) Fill the rest of the jar with water leaving about 3/4 inch of head space. Wipe the top of your jar with a clean cloth and place the lid & ring on the jars.
6) Process at 10 pounds pressure - Pints 75 minutes and Quarts 90 minutes. (For processing above 1,000 feet altitude adjust your times as necessary). Allow the canner to cool naturally.  

Do not rush the cooling process as beans have protein.  You should never rush a canner to cool quickly especially when canning proteins.

**Stay tuned - next week we will make and can homemade refried beans!**

Transplanting seeds!

So I finally the last of my beds filled with dirt so I could transplant my little seedlings! I bought these little white garden stakes off amazon (100 for $6) and my girls helped me make tags for all the garden items so we would know what everything was. We just wrote on them with permanent marker. (UPDATE: after a week they started fading drastically). We then picked out our transplant plants that seemed to be "thriving" the best, and planted them in the garden. The kids got to help with the transplanting and watering. I have 2 large garden beds, 2 small garden beds and several pots. I am picking up more buckets/pots today.

What are we growing you ask? Well, as of right now, almost everything is organic. So far we have 2 rows of purple dragon carrots, 2 rows of regular carrots, 1 full tomato plants, 1 cherry tomato plant, 6 bell pepper plants, 1 sweet pepper plant, 2 cucumber plants, 1 watermelon plant, 4 strawberries, 3 broccoli, 1 cauliflower, 1 celery, 11 tomato transplants (roma and beefsteak), 4 green bean, 2 blueberry bushes, 4 marigolds, and 2 citronella plants (hoping to ward off some of our mosquito this summer). It's a pretty good start, right?

Building Raised Garden Beds

My husband finally got a break from work and helped me finish the last of my garden beds. We used 2x4 and 2x6 pieces of wood with stakes in the corner to strengthen them and screws to hold everything together. My kids love helping, especially when it comes to the garden so even though it is extra stressful sometimes, and everything takes even longer, we try to let them help as much as possible. I hope by allowing them to help, plant, water and watch the seeds grow, maybe they will be more excited about eating (and better enjoying) the fruits of our labor. Jess (age 6) has been writing about it during her free writing time in school (kindergarten) so I know she has been thinking about it, and is excited to watch everything grow. Brixton (2 1/2) just likes to dig everything up and play in the dirt... but hopefully once the little red tomatoes start growing he will enjoy picking them and eating them! Chloee (age 4 1/2) loves to help, but said she would like to give her share away to someone else who needs it (so she doesn't have to eat it)... I'm hoping as stuff grows she will change her mind LOL.
Once we finished the boxes, I stapled weed barrier to the bottom of the bed in hopes of keeping my nice well composted dirt from mixing into our Florida dirt (sand) too much. *Fingers Crossed*. Then I will just need to pickup a little bit more dirt to finish filling them so I can start getting the rest of my seedlings all transplanted. Not a bad start... I'm anxious to see how this first year of gardening in Florida goes!

Regrowing Celery from your stalk

Here is a fun little gardening project the kids can easily help with. You can use the base of your celery stalk that you would normally throw out or compost, and regrowing more celery from it.  My kids enjoyed watching the roots slowly grow, and adding fresh water to the bowl every day. They checked it every morning to see how big the leaves were getting, then helped me transplant it into the garden.

Start off by cutting the bottom of your bundle of celery, leave maybe 1-2 inches of the "butt" on there. Place it in a bowl of warm water (facing up) in a window seal, or somewhere it can get light. After a few days leaves will start sprouting. The leaves grow very quickly over the first few days, and you will start noticing the roots coming out the bottom as well. I would recommend rotating your dish each day so all angles of the plants are getting sunlight.

Then, you can the celery in your garden, covering everything but the leaves. I am only about 3 weeks in on mine but I read it should take 3 months or so. Then as your celery stalks grow, cut off as much as you need. As long as you leave the root in the ground, your celery will grow back again and again.



Something you might want to know about growing celery successfully. It likes fertile soil, cool temperatures, and constant moisture. It will not tolerate heat and can be hard to transplant.