Return to the garden

I was gone from home for 4 days for an annual metaphysical fair that happens every summer up here in the copper country. I got back home on Tuesday night, so I didn't get out into the garden until Wednesday.
This is what I found.

They weren't that big when I left...

I spent all afternoon and early evening peeling and cutting them into chunks for canning, I got all but the 2 biggest ones taken care of. Today was the day to can them. I chose to go with quart jars for them because they tend to cook down a bit when you can them, and I use them in my crockpot meals. Most of my quart jars are wide mouth jars, so it's fairly easy to fill them up with the chunks of zucchini.

I finally got my canning kitchen set up out in the greenhouse, so this was the first run for the new setup. I have 2 large cast iron burners and a camper stove that I bought a couple years ago for a different project.

The jar heating pot is the bottom half of an old pressure canner that had a bad lid. I cut it in half and put the handles back on it. It holds as many jars as my current pressure canner, so this way I only need the one pot to heat up the jars before they go into the canner. I have 6 quart jars in it here. I could get 7 jars in it, but they'd be tight. The coffee pot is for boiling water to fill the jars, and the small pot has the lids in it, being heated up.

When the water in the canner was hot enough, the jars went into the canner.

During the cool down phase of the first batch, after the 30 minutes at 10 pounds pressure, I prepared the second batch of jars for canning. It takes about 45 minutes for the pressure to drop to 0 after the burner is turned off, so I have plenty of time to fill and heat the jars for the next batch.

The first batch is out and the second batch is in the pressure canner.

The second batch is done and out of the canner.

You might have noticed that there's 11 jars on the towel. That's because I lost the 12th jar while it was under pressure. I've only had this happen a few times, but it does occasionally happen. The bottom of the jar broke off while under heat and pressure. I saw it when I took the lid off the canner. There's not much you can do about it when it happens except clean up the mess.

One more look at my canning setup in the greenhouse. I had to use the flash for this picture, the light of day was fading to night outside.

So, that's my canning adventure for today. Next, I have to catch up on the tomatoes, and then the beans.

Thanks for stopping by and checking out my post, eh!

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And remember,