I had a bumper crop of peaches this year for some reason. Can’t eat them all fresh. I am reading up on canning peaches. It sounds simple enough. Just one problem. I don’t have a pot tall enough to water process my jar. Is it ok to lay it on its side?
OK, so this doesn’t answer your question (don’t you hate responses like this, lol?) but have you considered freezing them. Each summer I buy a crate of peaches and freeze most of what we don’t eat. Nothing like having them over pancakes or in a crepe on a cold wintry Sunday morning.
Also consider freezer preserves… 
You can’t put filled jars in boiling water on their sides. You need a canning pot.
Thanks for the reply anyway. Well I was going to send them to my kid. Can’t send frozen peach.
Does it have to be covered with water?
It’s been a while since I did any canning, but yes, it has to be about an inch over the jar. As to sideways, i don’t think you could count on the seal taking if any peach liquid got between the sealing ring and jar. Maybe a neighbor or a thrift shop would have a canning pot or a really tall pasta pot?
I got impatient and didn’t want to wait any longer. I did it with the jar sticking out about an inch over the water last night. The top is sealed but there are air bubbles. I don’t need it to preserve forever. Just a few week to survive the shipping and time for my kid to eat.
Why take health chances? Refrigerate it and get a proper pot and try again.
What can go wrong in a week or two? We keep fresh peach almost that long. Canned peach should keep at least as long as fresh peach even if canning wasn’t done properly. I would send fresh peach except the state does not allowed fresh fruits. Once my kid gets it, it will be refrigerated. I am not getting a pot to use just once. If I get another bumper crop next year, I will buy a pot.
They’re not properly sealed. At that rate you could have just stuck them in a jar, screwed the top on and shipped them.
I don’t really know the difference when it comes to fruit and why it’s necessary to seal them.
While high acid foods (like peaches) are less likely to provide a ideal growth environment for Clostridium botulinum than starchy low acid foods (like green beans or corn), improperly canned fruits can still grow a lovely batch of neurotoxin within a week or so. It only takes a couple of days for botulism spores to germinate and begin to reproduce. Improperly canned fruit can also grow a wide assortment of yeasts, fungi and bacteria–all of which have the potential to make someone very sick.
Clostridium botulinum only grows in a low oxygen environment–like inside a sealed canning jar. Fresh fruit may have botulinum spores all over it but unless the you store the fruit inside a hermetically sealed container that has no access to oxygen the spores aren’t going to germinate.
Refrigeration doesn’t stop the growth of botulinum, it just slows it down and it does nothing to destroy any neurotoxin already in the canned fruit.
It is sealed. The top is pressed down.
@WayOutWestMom Now you are scaring me! I will see if any of my neighbors have a canner.
To redo, do I need to break the seal?
While it’s unlikely your peaches are brewing botulism toxin, why take the chance?
You can re-can your fruit if you do so within 24 hours of the original canning.(Otherwise you need to refrigerate it and use as soon as possible.) Remove the old lid, add additional syrup if needed (syrup needs to be 1/2 inch below the top of the jar), clean the jar rim so the new lid can seal properly, re-process using a new lid.
Just go to a second hand store and buy a used canning water bath pot. Or ask friends on FB. It’s not just the pot, you should have a rack so the boiling jars don’t crack and burst in the pot and some canning tongs and now you need new lids . The ones you used are no longer good. I can a lot and haven’t poisoned anyone yet.
I make a lot of jams and jellies and so forth, and I almost never use the canning rack. In decades of canning, never had a jar break or burst. But I heartily concur regarding canning tongs, aka a jar lifter. Makes thing a LOT easier.
Note that if you use shorter jars, you can use a shorter pot.
I have some favorite peach recipes: Peaches with Vanilla and Cognac(increadible over good vanilla ice cream) and Pineapple Peach Jam. This year I made some peach jam using pectin for the first time. (I usually avoid it, except for wine or pepper jellies.) I decided to add some of Penzey’s Pie Spice, and the jam tastes just like a really good fresh peach pie. And it’s a beautiful color.
Anyone else have some faves? The local peaches are great right now…
I canned my peaches in pint jars this year because that seems to be the perfect size for my husband and me to have with a meal with enough left over for adding to yogurt or cottage cheese the next day. I also freeze a bunch, in quart size freezer bags. I’ve made peach jam and peach butter but find the flavor isn’t as strong as berry jams or butters so won’t do that anymore. I agree about not using pectin, so have added apples (high in natural pectin) but that detracts from the peach flavor. Canning and making jam is a fun hobby. I also usually make a batch of tomato peach salsa. Handy that both come into season at the same time.
I cooked the peaches in the Instapot with a little vanilla this year. Soo good over ice cream and yogurt! I will freeze those we don’t use since I do not can anymore.
We picked 30 lbs of peaches last weekend. Made a low-sugar cobbler, on to freezer jam and peach filling tomorrow. Used to can peaches, but then noone ate them. I have a big pot that I drag out for canning. When S2 was living here, he made about 40 qts of tomato sauce every summer. He did all the work, I supervised the canning.
Love the can lifter!! I don’t use a rack on the bottom of the pot, either. No broken jars.