Q and A: variety of sweet corn and half-gallon jars

Sweet corn

What variety of sweet corn do you grow? During canning our sweet corn turned brown. I thought this is due to high sugar content. Could you give us any advice on this.

Mylette Nall
Mayfield, Kentucky

Last year and this year we grew Seneca Horizon, a variety grown primarily in Canada (although it handled our heat and drought very well). We also grew Peaches and Cream this year and True Gold last year. Usually the brown discoloration IS from canning very sweet or super sweet varieties such as Kandy Korn. Choose a less sweet variety for canning; there are many out there. If the catalog description says “extra sweet” or some such wording, skip it for canning.– Jackie

Half-gallon jars

I have a few 1/2 gallon mason jars laying around that I would like to make use of this year. I’d like to can either grape or apple juice with them. I couldn’t find anything in your book (which we love using by the way) about using 1/2 gallon jars for this. Also, we have a Roma strainer and I’d like to use that to juice the apples and/or the grapes. Do you have to cook them before using the strainer to make the juice flow or just cut them up and put them in raw. Apples seem like they’d be too hard to just run through the apple/tomato screen.

Joshua Schrader
Duncannon, Pennsylvania

As canning in half gallons (which was common for generations with big families, mine included), is no longer recommended for more dense, low-acid foods, it is also no longer recommended for any canning — just to keep us safe from ourselves. I, personally, do can a few juices, soups, and chili in them. With juices, you process in a boiling water bath canner for the same length of time recommended for quarts. I add 15 minutes to the processing time when I can other non-dense foods in these large jars. Again, it is not expert-approved today.

Yes, when juicing apples in the Roma strainer, you need to remove stems, blossom ends, then chop and cook the apples in a little water. Then run the apples and liquid through your strainer, and remove the pulp with a jelly bag, leaving only clear juice. With grapes, just insert the grape spiral into the cone and start squeezing your grapes. You must use a grape spiral or it will plug up. — Jackie