Canning Flats
 

Just curious..I am not able to find canning flats anywhere near me! I am in Iowa. Anyone else having this problem? Canning time is upon us, so it is getting serious!

weather has been strange. We just had a farmer's market cancel for the rest of the summer as nobody was getting enough rain and typically we do so a lot of farmers don't have irrigation systems locally. also, I saw notices that produce stands were going to call it quits early as what crops there were came in early.

I was in Walmart this morning and one whole aisle was canning supplies, lots of jars from pint to quart and the bigger 1/2 gallon size also lot of the freezing plastic jars.. Lots of canning equipment. Even the end caps had flats of canning jars loaded on them.

The local farmer's market is booming. Lots of produce being sold at reasonable prices. I saw many buying bushel baskets to can or freeze.

Canning flats?

Are you looking for supplies or food products to can? I’m not familiar with the term.

Are you talking about the jar lids?

They have been scarce around here St. Paul Mn area - I check WalMart regularly and the canning section has mostly bare shelves - and no jar lids. Not even the rings and lids.

Flats are the flat parts you put on before the rings, to seal the jars. Not good at explaining! I do a lot of canning and there are no flats to be found around here!

Dang, sounds like it isn’t just a local problem. We are heading to San Francisco Thursday and will be on the lookout while there. My dil and I can lots of pickle relish, spaghetti sauce, salsa and tomato juice. The rest we freeze. We have enough jars, so I hate to buy the boxes of jars with lids when we don’t need jars. Who would have thought there would be a shortage.

I too live in Iowa and I agree that most stores have only jars and lids packaged together and not any of the flats that one can use with the sealing rings that one already has from previous canning. I have a sister in law who needed the flats and i was able to obtain some for her at an Ace Hardware store in a town near here. HyVee said they had them at a nearby store when I checked on line but when I went to the store to get some they told me they had not had any boxes of flats all year. The Ace Hardware personnel were very nice and sold me six boxes as my sister in law had requested. The brand on the box is one with which I am not familiar but I have no reason to believe that they would not be satisfactory for regular canning. If you have an Ace store near you I suggest you give them a call to see if they have them in stock or can obtain them for you. Some other internet sites listed them but I could not believe the prices they were asking. I paid $3.59 for each box of twelve flats. I thought that was reasonable enough.

You can buy them through Walmart.com if local store doesn't have them.

https://www.walmart.com/search/?quer...g%20jar%20lids