There is a shortage of... CANNING LIDS! What a weird time we live in....

[NRaleighLiberal]

I am having a really good gardening year. One of the best things about a big garden is preserving the abundance for use off season. Nothing is better to reach for in fall, winter or spring than a quart or two of home canned tomatoes.

But as I sit here with about 50 lbs of all types of heirloom tomatoes on my kitchen counter and living room table, I can't can because there are no lids to be purchased anywhere around where I live - and there are no wide mouth quart jars (most stores have no canning supplies at all, and say that it won't be until late August into September that they will appear again).

Go figure. In my 64 years, these seem the most bizarre times to be living in.

[SheltieLover]

1. Can you freeze & can later

When able to find lids?

[NRaleighLiberal]

3. No room in the freezer (we are already loaded up with pesto, sauce, berries, etc).

I've got some garden friends who are in other parts of the country that are sending some Monday. Gardeners are really kind people!!!

[SheltieLover]

13. Yes, they are nice folks

Living in concert with Nature adds a very real, pleasant side to people. 😊👍

Sry I wish I could gelp you find lids. Can you sell tomatoes? Trade them? Give them away? 😰

Glad you had such a great growing season though.

Have you thought of buying a freezer?

[NRaleighLiberal]

16. we have one freezer, but power outages are common here - which then

means a generator! We will be fine - some garden friends came to our aid...relief will arrive mid week!

[SheltieLover]

18. We have freq power outages too

Apparently people steal vehicles & ram them into elect equipment for "fun"

Glad friends are coming to your aid!) P😁👍

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

41. Oh, dear lord.

That's despicable.

[SheltieLover]

43. Yes it is

Memphis region is not so nice.

[Blue_true]

28. Make sure they pack them in a box where they can't be seen or heard.

They may not make it to you otherwise.

[Drahthaardogs]

2. So....look for Italian passatta jars and lids

Works great for tomatoes 👍

[NRaleighLiberal]

5. out of stock!

[Drahthaardogs]

21. Try this

https://homemakeit.com.au/products/tomato-sauce-passata-jar-bottle-720ml-53mm-opening-clear-glass-box-of-20

And just for the record, passata is way better than packed tomatoes. You need a food mill, but it's a superior product

[NRaleighLiberal]

23. thanks.....

I'll check that out - but nothing can beat my canned tomatoes! (it is the varieties I grow - and they hold their flavor so well, even for up to two years)

[Blue_true]

30. You may hate it. But did you look on Amazon?

What do you do with that much canned tomatoes? Do you eat a lot over the winter?

[NRaleighLiberal]

31. our goal is 50 quarts, so we can eat them in recipes weekly from my last fresh picked to next year's

first. I don't eat any tomatoes I don't grow (yes, I am so spoiled!)

[sarcasmo]

4. Check Ebay, expect post office delay.

[NRaleighLiberal]

9. the prices are being kicked up outrageously.

[sarcasmo]

22. The times we live in, everything short stocked is up.

[LeftInTX]

6. That is because everyone is gardening this year

I am surprised that they made it this far though.

I pictured most gardens dying out ...

My daughter is gardening for the first time in her life. I haven't seen her place, but from what she tells me, she kinda went all out....LOL Seeing that we're in South Texas, I thought everything would die. I'll have to ask her how it all turned out.

[NRaleighLiberal]

10. COVID has created countless new gardeners

Seed companies can't keep up - some have closed for weeks. It is insane (in a good way), but smaller seed companies are getting hammered.

[Kaleva]

57. Many don't realize that a garden would have to be huge in order to support even just 2 people

The average older person in good health ought to eat about 2 cups of vegetables per day. That's a quart per day for a couple.

It takes about 5 lbs of cabbage to make 1 gallon of sauerkraut. I'm estimating that I have enough cabbage in the garden to make 10 gallons of sauerkraut this year. Enough to supply our vegetable needs for 40 days. We have canned 20 quarts of pickled beets so that's a 10 day supply of vegetables. Along with tomatoes, onions, peppers and green beans, I'm hoping to get a 4 month supply of vegetables from my garden.

[Kali]

7. dry them!

keep longer, less room to store

also I have ton of lids, want me to mail them to you? (ok maybe more like dozens. I buy the jars for drinking glasses and some storage, but like the plastic lids better so of course the metal lids and rings pile up, most are wide mouth but I have some regular too)

[NRaleighLiberal]

12. I think I will be OK, but thanks, got two friends getting some into the mail Monday.

We love our canned tomatoes for soups...Gotta have our weekly tomato bisque!

[Kali]

19. when I say dry I mean crunchy dry, not oily and leathery like some

you can grind them into that soup for super (souper - ha!) intense flavor, I have done it in the oven with roma types, but even waterier (is that a word?) will work

I talk big with my barely two plants this year.

[NRaleighLiberal]

20. I've got 132 plants cranking them out - all different varieties

I think on some of the plants I will end up with 30 lbs - from ONE plant.

Little did I realize moving 4 hours west would make such a difference!

I do lots of oven roasting seeded tomato quarters until they are super concentrated - then use them in crostata recipes, pizza, pasta.

[Kali]

24. OMG

Im so jeallous. I am doing seeds again next year. My order from seed savers got delayed then canceled and by then it was pretty much too late to start. I was gifted a hybrid grape/plum thing from wallyworkld of all places and ended up taking care of the giver's plant as well. they are surprisingly tasty but the heat has them halted for now.

[NRaleighLiberal]

25. all you need to do is ask - I've got thousands of varieties, probably 50K packets of seeds

tomatoes, but also peppers, eggplants....free for friends! (since I've started doing Instragram live, I think I am supplying the world with tomato seeds!)

[Kali]

27. ok!

I will be thinking about it, I have learned (unlike you LOL) not to get too carried away with too many, but I do like to have a half dozen or so...

[NRaleighLiberal]

29. well, I am pretty deep into tomato R and D and people keep sending me their

special family heirlooms. It is an incredibly fun hobby....but it also reflects that when I get a hobby, I tend to go really deep into it (understatement warning!)

[Blue_true]

33. Do you run the oven roasted tomatoes through a sauce maker after roasting them,

or do you just deal with the seeds? I used to toast tomato quarters when I had more free time, but I always spooned out the seeds first.

[NRaleighLiberal]

36. neither seeds or skin bother us - and we like our sauce chunky

I combine seed saving with canning or sauce making. I don't skin tomatoes before canning. Saves time, quality is fine.

[Blue_true]

39. It is good that you can eat them that way. The seeds drive me nuts.

I used to also save them for next season planting. I washed and sun dried them, then sorted through them to find the healthiest looking seeds.

[LeftInTX]

61. There is no way we could 30 pounds from one plant in South Texas

Is your yield higher since you moved up to the mountains or is it lower?

Hot temps are the major limiting factor in tomato production down here.

[GulfCoast66]

8. Try something completely different. Pickle some of them.

Not the vinegar and salt type that requires canning, but fermentation pickling. I started with true sauerkraut and pickles. Then moved on to green tomatoes. Yeah, it’s weird having bacteria action taking place in your kitchen or, where you live basement. But the Russians made a diet based on it.

You can read how on many sights and the good bacteria are really good for us.

I’ve got a 3 gallon bucket of Kraut I’ve been eating regularly. Cucumber Pickles as well. The tomatoes are all gone.

Have a nice evening.

[NRaleighLiberal]

15. thanks for the idea.

my wife is the pickler, kombucha maker, kefir - but when one has 1.5 pound Cherokee Purples and Mortgage Lifters, it is sauce, dehydrate, and can....I had no idea the garden would produce so much (after gardening 28 years in Raleigh where the extreme heat did the plants in, living in the NC mountains means much happier plants!)

[GulfCoast66]

26. Yeah. Too much sugar in those for fermentation pickling.

I so envy you home grown tomatoes in late summer which I grew up with. P

It’s nice having them November thru May, but something about a BLT with of lots of mayo in August with a home grown tomato. After 33 years in Florida I still miss it.

But you have a better option. Blanch and skin them and freeze them. My grandmother born in 05 stopped canning once she got power and a freezer in the 50’s. The quality is really better. Especially if you get a Foodsaver. I have 3 freezers full of Venison, self caught fish and home grown produce. It really is the way to go. And if you don’t have a foodsaver then you are losing out more than you know. When you pull the air out of frozen products they last forever. I bet I’ve saved $5000 in the last 5 years.

Have a great evening. And have an August BLT for me.

[LeftInTX]

62. At least you can do winter tomatoes!

San Antonio's winters are too cold and summers are too hot.
We have two tomato seasons and this limits fruit size.

[WestLosAngelesGal]

11. At my nearest Walmart...

...they moved the canning supplies from the grocery department to the housewares department. I had a hard time finding them until I asked an employee. They are kind of hiding them so only the die-hard canners will find them!

[NRaleighLiberal]

14. It is a regional issue here - NO store has any. And no one seems to know why!

[Retrograde]

34. My local grocery had plenty of wide-mouth lids this week

Problem is, most of my jars have the narrower mouths. And Amazon's prices are about 4X what I paid last time I ordered some.

[NRaleighLiberal]

35. same here - I have wide mouth lids, but normal mouth quart jars!

[silverweb]

17. What did people do before canning lids?

I seem to remember paraffin poured on top of the contents while in the hot bath and cloth tied over the mouth of the jar with string.

Maybe you can do that, if paraffin isn't also in short supply?

[Retrograde]

32. Commercial canning only goes back to the early 1800s

Home canning is even newer. The problem is, for a lot of foods the contents of the can need to be heated to temperatures above the boiling point of water, which requires pressure.

There are some foods that can be canned at lower temperatures - tomatoes, especially the older, more acidic varieties. I've done paraffin seals on jams: they work because there's enough sugar to inhibit most microbial growth. Liquid paraffin has its own problems, like being hot enough to cause burns.

There are types of jars with reusable lids, but I'm leery of them. Canning works by heating the contents of the jars and driving out air, then creating a partial vacuum as the jars and contents cool: that's the popping noise you hear that indicates that the seal took.

What did people do before home canning? Dried things, salted them, pickled them, stored them in root cellars or spring houses, covered them with a layer of fat and hoped for the best.

[silverweb]

45. We need to relearn some of these old techniques.

When our basic needs rely on global supply chains that are at risk of disruption, we have a real problem on our hands. Learning how to do for ourselves again needs to become a priority.

[Kaleva]

56. I'm working on converting my entire back yard into a vegetable garden and orchard.

I thought it was going to be a multi year process but the stimulus checks we received speded up the process quite a bit.

[GulfCoast66]

42. Real pickling. Water, salt and good bacteria. It last a long time. Put it in a crock.

Add some salt and the good bacteria that pervaded their homes and it lasted forever. Or at least thru the winter till the new greens came in. I add a tablespoon of my old stuff as a starter and use distilled water. Chlorine is no friend of bacteria.

I still do it today. It’s like a science project in you kitchen! All this Kombucha or what not. That’s what my great, great grandparents lived on all winter long. Fermented vegetables and cured pork. Which also lasted forever

It is way more funky than most Americans are now used to. Pulling off the mold cap would cause most people to just die. But I ferment my own and put a couple of tablespoons in my smoothie every morning.

Good bacteria is our friend.

[silverweb]

44. Nice!

I do believe you're right about the reaction of most people today to pulling off the mold cap!

[GulfCoast66]

51. Ok. So I put that in for effect. I'm media trained!

But I can also hang a freshly killed deer and break it down I to quarters in less than 20 minutes. Cooking cuts in less than a hour.

I am well aware that most people on DU live in Blue cities. Which I have for much of my life.

But I really want to remind DU members that some good democrats are not city folks.

And mold caps are a thing. If you ferment vegetables you might get one.

I can’t imagine what my great grandparents went through. Living in the Deep South with no AC. And only eating what you grew or killed. My mother grew up eating squirrels for supper! Did not get power till the mid 50’s when she was in high school.

They were striving to survive and I’ve been to Europe 10 times! It’s a crazy world.

[silverweb]

54. A crazy world, indeed.

I'm one of those blue city folks, but I did grow up in a semi-rural setting. When I think about what we've given up in terms of self-reliance for convenience, I feel sick.

Maybe the crazy preppers aren't all that crazy after all. Wait. Yes, they are. However, there are some useful things we can learn from them.

In any case, the idea to learn to do for ourselves again and not rely so heavily on others far away is one we need to embrace again. We have made ourselves all but helpless with our dependence on foreign-made convenience products -- and that's not a good thing.

[GulfCoast66]

63. I agree. But is not possible for so many people.

I have a big yard and garden. Plus I’m a very good angler and always have lots of fish and game in my freezer. But my best friend of 41 years lives in Brooklyn Heights with his family. He make way more money that I, but there is no way he can be self sufficient at all. Nor can the millions of Americans who have to work 60 hours a week just to keep an apartment.

Having the ability to garden, hunt and fish puts me in a very privileged place.

[Kaleva]

55. I made fermented sugar snap peas this year and I'm going to ferment a lot of tomatos

It looks like I'll have enough cabbage to make about 10 gallons of sauerkraut.

I made 2 gallons of my version of kimchi which is just spicy fermented cabbage, carrots and onion.

[central scrutinizer]

37. Cook down to paste consistency?

My SIL did this last year. Skin them first, then boil, stirring frequently. She then put the paste into quart freezer bags and froze. There’s no shortage of canning supplies here (Eugene, OR) but I did have to go to two stores to find pickling salt so I can ferment my peppers.

[niyad]

38. To our genius NRL-I check with the library regularly. Your book is in constant circulation,

especially this weird gardening season. But our stores have jars and lids!

Do you remember a number of years back, when there was another lid shortage? Cannot remember the reason.

[Renew Deal]

40. DUers noticed the coin shortage before almost anyone

I wonder if this is another canary.

[Hekate]

46. A lot of shortages have to do with everybody staying home. People are not out and about ...

...redistributing their coins, so coins are not in circulation. People aren’t getting their hair dyed in salons, but doing it at home, so grocery stores and drug stores are running out of little boxes of hair dye for home use. Toilet paper manufacturers have whole divisions devoted to gigantic rolls of TP for use in office buildings, restaurants, schools, and work sites of all kinds. Now all of a sudden we’re stuck at home and our need for home use TP went way up.

I think gardening and canning are more of the same.

[Rhiannon12866]

47. I never know what they'll be out of from week-to-week at the grocery store

Sometimes it's been canned tuna, other times it's been cheese (and New York is a dairy state), it's recently been bologna (which I get for my brother) and paper products - not just toilet paper - are usually scarce. They often only have those little square boxes of tissues and food wrapping products offer very few choices.

[Retrograde]

49. Rice vinegar and mayonnaise were scarce for a while here

There seem to be random shortages - I scored the last quart of buttermilk earlier this week! All-purpose flour was hard to find for a while, but now I see pallets of it (and no bread flour). I'm starting to feel like we're approaching the old Soviet bloc system of distribution, where people stock up on what's available whether they need it or not.

[Rhiannon12866]

52. Bread was scarce early on, now they seem to have plenty

And I agree about mayonnaise, it's hit-or-miss whether it's available from week-to-week - so I do try to stay a jar ahead. This week I scored a small bag of dishwasher detergent pods, they had only a few on the shelf. And you're right about hoarding - it seems to have gotten better, but early on I'd see people with heaping baskets, it was tough on the check-out people and not fun if you got behind them in line. One of the regular check-out clerks told me that someone bought basketfuls of toilet paper when it was in stock - though now I've noticed that they have limits on certain items.

[jmowreader]

48. There's also a nationwide shortage of freezers

[sakabatou]

50. I'm unsure we've really been doing any canning this year

My family and I just pick from the garden and use whatever we need right away.

[uppityperson]

53. Hey, you

It's been a while. I was thinking about you today while digging spuds and checking on my 2 tiny green tomatoes on our volunteer plant (none on want of the 6 I planned), and how different our growing seasons are.

We noticed the lid shortage also, it's odd what is hard to get between higher demand and lower amounts available due to the landside pandemic, making and shipping them.

Best wishes to you all.

[boston bean]

58. I actually thought this might happen and I bought

Some lids whenever I could find them.

[Buckeyeblue]

59. How many plants does it take to get to 50 lbs of tomatoes? Just curious.

[sinkingfeeling]

60. I just sold a huge bag of canning lids and rings for $5.

Also gave away 6 dozen jars of all sizes.

[txwhitedove]

64. Hi. I've never tried it, but you can seal with wax the items that will be eaten first. It's not

for long time preservation. I remember seeing this and my grandma using it. Possibly not for acidic foods like tomatoes, but better for jellies and jams. Good luck.

[Jane Austin]

65. May I send you some?

They seem to be available at my HEB.

How many would you like.

It would be my pleasure to help with your project.