Ideally you capture fruit at the height of its ripeness when canning. Too ripe and it becomes mushy. Not ripe enough and its tastiness is compromised. The pears and peaches gifted to me from my friends’ orchard were at that perfect point for canning: Pears in a light brown sugar syrup Peaches, pitted and halved Peaches canned with vanilla. [Update & note to self: Next time skip the vanilla. It’s not the best in combo with peaches.]
Plum trees turned out enough plums in this first season to make three pints and one quart of jam. Here is a bowl of the pitted bounty: The trees yielded 6 cups of fruit once I pitted the plums. I added 1.25 cups of water, 4 cups of sugar, and 2 tablespoons of powdered pectin to the mix, plus a teaspoon of citric acid to up the tartness. Then set it on the stove to boil. While boiling the fruit, I boiled the jars and lids. When the fruit was boiled down to the right thickness, I jarred those babies and put them in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes.
The scraggly plum trees that came with the property did pretty well — considering they’ve had no care in a long time. Enough plums to make a small jar of preserves, plus a few for eating fresh….