Canning can help make your produce last all year. My grandmother, who was a cafeteria lady at the local school, was an avid canner. In her basement, she had an entire wall of deep shelves that were shoved full of well organized canned products in the root cellar. During the growing season, my grandparents would eat the produce they were growing by starting with the what was picked first and then going toward the new pickings. Eventually, they would have so much produce, however, that my grandmother would take her mason jars and her pressure cooker and go to town with all of the fresh produce her husband had brought in. Following the pressure cooking, she would put reasonable expiration dates on the jars and take them down into the root cellar. Then, even in the dead of winter, their home grown produce could be enjoyed.
Preserving your own food can be a good way to make yourself partially or fully self-sufficient. Recipes can easily be found online for how to can your favorite food, but the basics are similar for most foods. When you use the pressure cooking method, you have to get above 240oF for a length of time, which depends on the food and typically ranges from 10 minutes to as much as 30 minutes. There are many things factored into this time limit but it’s best to follow it and adjust accordingly if the instructions differ at your altitude.
The time limit on canning comes from the amount of time required to kill off the bacteria that occurs naturally on fresh produce. In normal conditions these bacteria will just cause the food to spoil over time, but when the bacteria are heated to the boiling point of water (212oF) they form spores. These spores are then dormant until the seal is broken between the lid and jar by opening. Once you open it, these spores are released and ingested. These bacteria then can cause serious illnesses like botulism.
Canning can be a great way to preserve the foods your grow at home. Depending on the model you get, the pressure cooker may not be very expensive (under $100) and can be used for many years to come. The mason jars can also be bought new and reused inexpensively or purchased second hand and reused. Don’t feel weird about reusing old jars either because you will be completely sanitizing them when you can your foods anyway.