Harvest & pantry
How many pounds of produce per canning jar?
Both directions, pounds to jars and jars to pounds, from the USDA canner-load tables, for ten common products.
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How this works
Both directions: type what you picked to get jars, or type the jars you want to get the pounds to pick or buy. Numbers are the USDA canner-load tables — 21 lb of tomatoes fills 7 quarts, 13 lb fills 9 pints. The pint figure is not half the quart figure, so both are carried. Bushels are the canning guide's weights (tomatoes 53 lb; apples, peaches and cucumbers 48; snap beans 30) — a farm-stand “box” of tomatoes is usually a 25–32 lb lug, not a bushel.
Questions people ask
How many pounds of tomatoes for 7 quarts?
About 21 pounds for whole or halved tomatoes, and roughly 53 pounds - a bushel - for a full 7-quart batch of sauce after it reduces.
How many tomatoes are in a bushel?
About 53 pounds, which yields 15 to 21 quarts depending on whether you are packing whole or cooking down to sauce.
Why is my yield lower than the chart?
Charts assume trimmed weight. Bruising, coring and peeling all take their cut, and a sauce reduced longer for thickness gives fewer jars.