Canning Calculations

Our garden this year has seemed to fall behind others’ gardens.

The veg is looking great, but everything has seemed 2 weeks behind ‘normal’ production schedules that I’ve seen elsewhere.

Of course, some of this could be because we have non-gm heirloom plants, rather than special everything-tolerant plants. I don’t know.

I printed out a copy of our 5-week menu and started by identifying which meals have a base of tomatoes.

I figured that the cycle repeats itself 10.4 times in the year, so I rounded that up to 11.


Presently, I use canned tomatos as the base in my red sauces/soups, and fresh tomatos as a topping or garnish, or in salads.

A large can of tomatoes holds 28oz.

A quart jar holds 32oz.

After putting estimations on consuption together, I figured that we would need the following for a 1-year supply:

• 50 1-quart jars of tomatoes (for soups, pasta/pizza/chilli sauces). (Need just over 3 lbs of tomatoes per quart canned)

• 22 16-oz jars of mixed veg (tomatoes/onions/squash/courgettes/aubergines) for use in stuffing peppers/aubergines/courgettes.

• 7 16-oz jars of pesto.