About HarvestGuide.ca

What this is: a Canadian preserving and home-canning resource that publishes only tested methods, cites Canadian authorities (not US ones), and shows altitude adjustments by default. The harvest-time half of GrowersGuide.ca.

Editorial mission

Canadian preserving is its own thing. Our growing zones are tougher, our jar standard is metric (125 mL, 250 mL, 500 mL, 1 L — Bernardin), our climbing cities are at real altitude (Calgary 1,045 m; Banff 1,383 m), and our shopping habits are different (Bernardin, not Ball; Amazon.ca, not Amazon.com).

Most preserving content on the open web is American. It’s often excellent — but it cites US sources, uses US jar sizes, and gives altitude adjustments in the US bracket system. Copy-pasting that content into a Canadian kitchen leaves you with the wrong jar, the wrong altitude band, and a recipe that may or may not be safely tested for what’s in your jars.

HarvestGuide.ca exists to be the Canadian-first alternative.

What we publish, and what we don’t

We publish:

• Tested methods sourced from Bernardin and Health Canada.
• Altitude-adjusted processing tables for the four Canadian metric bands.
• Equipment guides and product recommendations tied to Amazon.ca availability.
• Troubleshooting articles for the problems Canadian preservers actually have (jars that didn’t seal, jam that didn’t set, low-acid mistakes).

We don’t publish:

• Untested processing times. Every minute count we ship traces back to Bernardin or Health Canada — we will leave a number blank with “pending verification” copy rather than fabricate it.
• Recipes that water-bath low-acid foods. Pressure canning is the only safe path for those.
• Numbers paraphrased from US sources. We cite Canadian authorities directly.

Authority sources

Every factual claim on the Site traces back to a Canadian-respected source. The full list is in our codebase under SOURCES; the primary ones are:

• Health Canada — food safety, foodborne illness, recalls, Canada Food Guide.
• Bernardin — Canada’s home canning standard; the Complete Book of Home Preserving is our practical reference.
• Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) — commercial food safety and recall information.
• Statistics Canada — demographics, agricultural data, city elevations.
• Provincial agriculture ministries — OMAFRA (ON), MAPAQ (QC), BC Ministry of Agriculture, Alberta Agriculture & Irrigation.

We never cite USDA / NCHFP as a primary source. They’re excellent for background reading, but our audience reads Canadian.

The five methods we cover

1. Water-Bath Canning — high-acid foods (jams, pickles, acidified tomatoes, fruit).
2. Pressure Canning — the only safe method for low-acid foods (vegetables, meats, beans, soups).
3. Freezing & Blanching — the fastest, lowest-equipment method.
4. Dehydrating — herbs, fruit leather, jerky, pantry-stable storage.
5. Fermenting & Root Cellaring — sauerkraut, lacto-pickles, kimchi, and traditional winter storage.

Our differentiator: altitude

Canadian altitudes range from sea level (Halifax, Vancouver) to over 1,000 metres (Calgary, Banff, parts of the BC interior). Boiling-water and pressure-canning processing both change with altitude, and most US-leaning preserving sites either ignore this or use the US bracket system. Our altitude-adjustments guide uses Bernardin’s Canadian metric bands directly.

How we make money (honestly)

HarvestGuide.ca is reader-supported. When you click an Amazon link on the Site and buy something, we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. That funds the testing kitchen and keeps the Site free to read. We are an Amazon Associate; full details are on the Affiliate Disclosure page.

We may also display Google AdSense advertising once approved. Ads will be clearly labelled as such.

Affiliate commissions never decide which products we recommend. We only recommend gear the editorial team would buy themselves — and if a product turns out to be worse than we said, we’ll update or remove the recommendation.

Sister site

GrowersGuide.ca is the growing-season half — Canadian planting calendars, variety guides, frost dates, and gardening calculators. When you’re ready to preserve what you’ve grown, you come here. When you’re ready to grow what you preserve, you go there.

Corrections

If a processing time, headspace value, pH claim, or other factual detail is wrong, we want to hear about it. Food-safety errors are treated as urgent — we aim to fix and label them within 48 hours of confirmation. See the Corrections Policy for what we fix, how we label it, and how to report an error.

Contact

Email [email protected] with corrections, source-verification requests, or partnership enquiries. See the Contact page for response-time expectations and what we can and can’t answer.