My First Canning

[Acornewell]

Don't get out the ruler and measure, but eyeball the headspace.  If you don't, it'll boil over the seal or explode.  I just boiled over my seals (yeah, another point - be sure the tops are screwed on TIGHT!) when I did spicy dilly beans a couple weeks ago...

Did you follow a recipe from the beginning?  As you add pectin, you'll also need to add sugar... I try not to use pectin of I can help it.

Ah hah...that makes sense.  Not exploding would be a good reason.  Sorry about your peaches and spicy dilly beans.  Were you able to salvage them?

I did follow the recipe, I did not know I should have added more sugar!   

I dont even know what to do at this point. 

[longbskt]

Double the amount of pectin.  I've had to do that in the past.

I only made 3 jars of dilly beans, so I just popped them all in the fridge. 

[BoatGuy]

Cool deal! I just canned my first peaches the other day, and learned a valuable lesson... when they say 1/2" of headspace, don't cheat... 

I dont understand the headspace thing...I understand it cant be overfilled.  But does it have to be exact?

longbskt pretty much covered it. The only thing I would add is that when it boils over, you can also stand a good chance of getting "stuff" in between the seal and jar, causing it not to seal properly.


I just seem to have this aversion to leaving extra room in the jar. So, I make the same mistake over and over. I'm stupid that way... lol

[Johnny-Max]

WhoooRay! Way to go!