Creative Canning | March 2023

Canning Recipes for Late Winter & Early Spring

The month of March is a transition point in the year-round canning calendar, from the heartier winter fare and late winter citrus to the first spring flowers and fruit.

March Canning Recipes

In California and Florida, it’s peak strawberry season, and many of the early spring wildflowers like dandelions, forsythia, and wild violets are available in all but the coldest parts of the country.

There’s still winter citrus, of course, and all of the meal-in-a-jar style canning recipes that make putting dinner on the table quick and easy.

This time of year, we’ll put up the last of our pressure canned soups, dried beans, meats, pot pie fillings, and convenience meals…right before fruit season kicks into high gear.

For those of you in warmer climates, I’ve included the earliest fruits that will appear this month.

Citrus Canning Recipes

It’s the tail end of citrus season, but we still see plenty of fresh grapefruit, tangerines, and luscious blood oranges at the market. There are also plenty of fresh lemons, and they’re on sale because it’s the last of the main crop.

I take this opportunity to put up a summer’s worth of lemonade concentrate, as well as strawberry lemonade concentrate with the first spring berries.

• Canning Lemonade Concentrate

• Canning Strawberry Lemonade Concentrate

• Lime Marmalade

• Low Sugar Orange Marmalade

• Kumquat Jam

Early Spring Canning Recipes

The first day of spring is March 20th, but here in Vermont, the snow’s just starting to melt by then, and we’re focused on maple sugaring season. Most places are seeing early edible wildflowers and fruit this time of year, and the first asparagus too.

• Old Fashioned Strawberry Jam

• Canning Strawberry Pie Filling

• Haskap Jam (with early spring Haskap Fruit)

• How to Make Flower Jelly (with 20+ Recipes)

• 12+ Rhubarb Canning Recipes

• Pickled Asparagus

• Canning Maple Syrup

Pressure Canning Recipes

This time of year, we’re pressure-canning many meal-in-a-jar recipes so that we don’t have to spend much time in the kitchen during the busy (and hot) summer season. Temperatures are still cool, so it’s a great time to get ahead on your cooking on a cool, rainy spring day.

Some of my favorite Meal in a Jar Canning Recipes include:

• Boston Baked Beans

• Beef Pot Pie Filling

• Thai Curry Duck

• White Bean Chicken Chili

• Cajun Red Beans and Sausage

Soup canning recipes aren’t a bad idea, either….

• Canning Sausage, Potato, and Kale Soup

• Canning Beef Stew

• Canning Carrot Soup

• Canning Split Pea Soup

• Canning Chicken Soup

In the root cellar, the potatoes are starting to think about sprouting, and anything that’s not put up now won’t make it much longer. Many of our late winter canning recipes are all about preserving things we put up earlier in the season…but didn’t put up long enough.

If you’re storing any of these root crops, March is a great time to can them so they’ll keep all summer long:

• Canning Potatoes

• Canning Carrots

• Canning Beets

If your sauerkraut is that you started fermenting last fall is getting too sour…now’s the time to can it too. (That’s a simple water bath canning recipe, but you can also do it in a pressure canner.)

• Canning Sauerkraut

Lastly, you’ll also want to put up any garlic that’s started to sprout, and there’s a simple water bath canning recipe for pickled garlic too.

If there’s a canning or preserving recipe that you’d like to find, please do let me know in the comments, and I’ll see what I can do to track it down for you.

Happy Canning!

-Ashley at Creative Canning

(Ps. I also run the blog Practical Self Reliance, which has information on all manner of food preservation techniques (cheesemaking, salt curing, winemaking) as well as just about everything else you’d need to learn to be self-reliant in this modern world. It has its own substack as well, and you can subscribe to practical self-reliance separately as well. That newsletter comes out weekly and covers canning, as well as everything else.)