The Final Two Batches of Plum Jam

Thursday afternoon, my parents came over to help me with the yard-work in my backyard. It was GREAT - we got so much done, including picking the remaining plums from the tree. (we used a ladder, and picked everything that we could reach. The rest of the fruit higher up on the tree will sadly just fall to the ground to be composted.)

We probably picked another 25 pounds of plums, or so. After sorting them out, Dick and I made two last batches of Plum Jam. We made the first Friday night, and the second Saturday afternoon.

Note: we picked all the fruit that we could reach, even if it wasn't quite ripe. When we sorted the plums Friday night, we kept some to the side that were still a bit yellow, rather than tossing them to the compost bin, as we have done in the past. By the time we made our second batch on Saturday afternoon, all the plums had ripened so much that we couldn't tell which ones had been yellow only the day before.


The last plum harvest - probably about 25 pounds


this is our new method of cleaning and sorting the plums in our kitchen sink


Friday night's final count: 16 12oz jars and 1 12 oz jar about 1/2 full

Friday night's batch:

16 12oz jars (plus another 12oz jar that was 3/4 full)
Our largest batch this year!
8 cups sugar
1 cup sugar mixed in with
7 boxes of Pectin

Saturday afternoon's Batch:

15 12 oz jars
1 8 oz jar
8 cups sugar
1 cup sugar mixed in with
8 boxes of Pectin

It turns out at that 8 boxes of pectin makes for a really nice jam/jelly consistency. It's Dick's favorite batch so far. I think this will be the go-to recipe next year!


Saturday afternoon's batch: 15 12oz jars and 1 8oz jar

I figured out the final tally of jars of jams that we've made over the last 22 days:

Jammapalooza 2013 Final Jam Tally

7 batches of Plum Jam Made

Roughly 65 pounds of fresh plums from our backyard
(the first batch was about 5 pounds of fresh fruit, the other 6 batches were about 10 pounds of fresh fruit each)

about 70 cups of Sugar
(equivalent to almost 30 pounds)

41 boxes of Pectin (1.75 ounces each)

96 12oz jars of Plum Jam
(with an additional 6-8oz of partial jars from each batch. Probably a total of another 4 12 oz jars)

Wow!! That's a whole lotta jammin!

I've already given several jars of jam away to friends (probably about 15-20 jars), and have another 75 or so jars left.

Jam for everyone! I'm having pretty labels made to put on the jars next. If I'm seeing you anytime soon, I'll probably greet you with a jar of jam! :)


77 jars of jam!

I'm pretty proud that we managed to make so much yummy jam over the last 21 days, and that we did a decent job of keeping up with the crazy amount of fruit that our trees produced. I'll still be picking up the fallen plums (from the top of the trees that we can't reach) on the grass, ground and patio, but I'm happy to say that it never got completely out of control. We learned a lot this year, and devised a pretty good system both for picking and composting the fruit, as well as for making the jam. Yay!!