Interactive lesson

The preserving plan, step by step

Interactive lesson: from menu to jar, from jar to kilograms and the garden — how many preserves your family needs and when each is made.

Free sample Chapters 1 and 2 (8 steps) are free. The full lesson comes with the module A preserving plan for the family. Already bought? Unlock

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The whole lesson as text

1. Menu first

The preserving year starts in January, with a pencil, not in August at the pan.

What's left — Before you plan, count what's left from last winter. A plan "the same as last year", without counting, is the commonest mistake.
A menu for January — Write a weekly menu: how many times bean stew, goulash or chilli, cabbage rolls, a roast, pizza, breakfast with ajvar.
30 weeks — Tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and beans are gone from the first frost until the new crops. The jars cover roughly 30 weeks, from November to the end of May.
Jars a week — From the menu you see how many jars of each product the family eats a week. That is the first number in the plan.

Why: Most families put up preserves "the same as last year". Then in February the ajvar runs out, and in June fifteen jars of pickles nobody eats are still in the larder. The plan starts from what the family really eats through the winter.

Cabbages, potatoes, carrots and apples for winter go in a cellar or clamp, not in jars.
With a polytunnel, a cellar or in a mild coastal area, the number of weeks is smaller for some products.

2. From jar to kilograms

Work backwards: from jars a week to kilograms of vegetables.

Work backwards — Jars a week × 30 weeks + 10 % reserve. By hand: jars a week × 33.
The norm per person — An adult is 1 AE (adult equivalent), a child aged 7–14 is 0.7, a child up to 6 is 0.4. Allow roughly 30–40 jars of 700 mL per AE.
A family of four — Two adults and two children (3.1 AE): roughly 109 jars and 78.6 L. If that's too much for a first year, start with half.
Jars into kilograms — Ajvar: 1.1 kg of peppers for a 370 mL jar. Tomato juice: 1.5 kg for 1 L. For the example that is about 120 kg (265 lb) of vegetables.

Why: Once you know how many jars you need, the factors from the H43 series recipes tell you how many vegetables that is. So you know what to plant and what to buy before the season starts.

The factors are approximate: they depend on variety, ripeness and how thick you cook. After the first season replace them with your own from the batch logs.
Your real consumption may be half or double the norm.

3. A garden for preserves · Locked

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4. Jar, freezer or cellar · Locked

Buy the module A preserving plan for the family and you get the PDF to download and print, plus lifetime access to this interactive lesson: all 6 chapters, 24 steps.

5. Batches and shopping · Locked

Buy the module A preserving plan for the family and you get the PDF to download and print, plus lifetime access to this interactive lesson: all 6 chapters, 24 steps.

6. The larder and yearly review · Locked

Buy the module A preserving plan for the family and you get the PDF to download and print, plus lifetime access to this interactive lesson: all 6 chapters, 24 steps.