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| Photo Credit: Megan Bame |
| After harvesting your green beans from the garden, pop them in the fridge if you aren’t ready to work with them yet. Just before using them, wash well. For 7 quarts of canned green beans, you need to start with 14 pounds of fresh ones. |
With food prices rising, canning our garden’s bounty is regaining popularity – and green beans are a great place to start. Now, I’ve strung and snapped a few green beans in my time, but not as many as an older generation who put up quart jars by the dozen in a few short weeks through the summer. It’s not hard – you’ve just got to follow the rules and be ready to can when your food is ready to harvest.
When the green beans are ready, you’ve got to pick them or they’ll get “beany” and tough. Once they’re picked, you can store them in the refrigerator for a few days, but for best quality it’s necessary to work them up soon after harvest. Now, assuming you’ve picked or bought more green beans that you know what to do with, here’s how to preserve them using a weighted pressure canner: | Add Photo to Journal |  | | Photo Credit: Megan Bame | | After snapping and stringing the beans, rinse them again. |
1. Wash the beans with clean water in a large bowl. Agitate to loosen any soil on the beans, then drain the water.
2. Wash the jars in the dishwasher so that they’ll be clean and hot when you’re ready to pack. 3. Start by breaking off each end of the bean. If the beans have strings, pull them out as you break off the ends. Cut out any visible insect damage or rust, then snap the beans in 1-inch pieces. Place the ends and the strings in a bowl for discarding, and place the snapped beans in a clean bowl. I like to use a 4- or 8-cup measuring bowl, so I can guesstimate how many beans I’ll need for a canner (4 cups fills approximately 1 quart). 4. Run water over the broken beans, agitate and drain. 5. Fill the clean, hot jars with green beans. Pack them in tightly, up to the neck of the jar.
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