Preserving peaches

Bottled Golden Queen and Black Boy peaches

Just sharing a couple of photos following on from my last post where I mentioned preserving some of our peach harvest. I've only recently started preserving fruit so this is all quite exciting!

The yellow ones are Golden Queen and the purple is Black Boy. I could have done another jar of the Black Boy, but we want to eat the ones we have picked fresh! :-) There is more fruit on the tree, just waiting for it to ripen.

I used a light sugar syrup (1 cup sugar to 4 cups water), and my trusty Fowler's Vacola for the water bath process. It seems to have been successful, as all the seals are good. I guess if you are doing quite a few jars that would be the test. One thing though, as G pointed out, I could have put less fruit and more syrup in the jars as once opened obviously there is a limited time to eat all that fruit..! I will do this next time, plus will also try to obtain more of the smaller sized preserving jars (1pint/600mls). This time round I used them all up for the tomato sauce and relish.

Preparing fruit for bottling