One of my first experiments in preserving was Basil jelly. Never did figure out what to do with it.

Basil jelly is normally used as a glaze on meats. You could stir some into spaghetti sauce, too. I add sugar to my sauce anyway, and basil, too. I would use it up that way.
Can't think of anything that I canned that was really bad. My orange marmalde never sat and it is still out there. Think I will thicken with Clear Jel and use in making breakfast cereal bars.

We aren't big jam/jelly eaters, so I find my shelves full of uneaten Preserves. The only two that ever are gone by the next season are Raspberry and Apricot.

Apple mint chutney. I just don't like mint, and it turned a brownish color. Green tomato salsa is something I just don't like. I LOVE tomatillo salsa, but someone told me I could make green tomato salsa using my regular red tomato recipe. I didn't even bother to can it when I got done, it just wasn't that good, IMHO. I also made green tomato mincemeat once, that just wasn't that good either. About the only thing I even remotely like with green tomatoes are dilled pickled ones. My rose hip jelly with wild rose hips experiment from last year was a complete waste of time--only rugosa hips are worth the trouble.

I've had a few disasters in my day, like when I left the cabbage out of my pickalili--but those weren't planned experiments, just my general inability to focus because I'm usually having to multi-task or have a lot on my mind while I'm trying to get the canning done.

I'd like to try more chutneys but I'm kinda skeptical of a lot of the recipes I see. Today I made some very good apricot chutney, but it was very traditional.

I attempted to make a peach raspberry jam with pomona's.

It was nasty looking and tasting.

Canning citrus. I tried light and heavy syrup, using grapefruits and also mandarin oranges. I composted the lot.

Also, I did not like the tomatillo salsa I canned, but it might be to the fact I did not care for the flavors of the tomatillos we grew.

Bread & butter pickles -- bright orange (from the tumeric), and making them made me realize I don't really like pickles. Emeril's rosemary garlic pickled green beans. They're supposed to be used to garnish a bloody mary (a drink I can't stand, but I had visions of throwing fabulous, sophisticated brunches...) and they all turned pink in the jars. I can't remember what that means, but it can't be good (and certainly doesn't make me want to eat them).

Watermelon rind pickles. A pain in the patootie, and I don't care for sweet things anyway. Somehow, though, I became fascinated and made several batches, changing spices. Turned out all right though, because DH sings in a barbershop chorus where quite a few of the guys are old enough to remember the watermelon rind pickles their mom used to make, so they enjoyed receiving them. Only now, DH has begun mentioning to me how much so-and-so enjoyed the last jar he got...

Pickled cauliflower. Too strong a vinegar taste, and it isn't crunchy enough anyway. Pickled boiling onions too. I believe I still have several jars of each. :P

tomato apple chutney. Yuck.

Oh wow. The ones that stand out at the moment are a low-sugar apricot-raspberry preserve. Due to the low sugar it came out more like canned fruit in 8 oz. jars and the raspberries turned the whole mixture an unappetizing reddish-orange.

A salsa verde recipe that called for tomatillos. I ran short of tomatillos and subbed green tomatoes. Eventually I threw the whole batch out - food for the compost pile. I'm not sure I would have liked it even if I had enough tomatillos in the first place.

A roasted tomatillo chipotle salsa from the BBB. It is hotter than h*des and a deep espresso brown. Great color for coffee, doesn't do much for me in salsa. Fortunately I have a friend who loves the hot stuff and I gave a lot to him.

A vidalia onion relish made last season I haven't even opened yet. Everyone raves about it but I can't get past the mustardy-yellow color (due to the turmeric in the mixture). This stuff is so bright road workers could use it to paint lines.

But the worst ever is from my youthful cooking days before I knew enough to recognize when a recipe is deeply flawed. I made a peach chutney that called for a full pound of raw ginger. I know now that is just an insane amount but then I didn't. Utterly and totally repulsive results.

Carol

Really a good idea (NOT). Buying 4 full bushels of very ripe beautiful peaches with no cool space to put them while and until we could preserve them. It is amazing how quickly peaches spoil in the South, even with AC going full blast, me furiously trying to get them all dunked in boiling water to slip the skins, adult daughter sweating over the humongous bowl slicing and measuring them like mad, while BWB boiled gleefully, and our preserving pans getting red hot with successive batches of sugar, peaches,and pectin for jam. Tons of jam, massive amounts of jars and tops and rings, and rim wiping to do. It was a good two months before we even tasted the jam because we were so sick of the peach smell. But, that was a year ago and we are just about ready to do it again, except that we will buy only one bushel at a time and let the farmer keep the peaches in his nice cooler until we are ready to repeat the fun.

Nancy

I tried to make ketchup in a crock pot. Foolishly I thought it would be like Heinz. Ha! It turned out wierd tasting and brown with a burnt off flavor. Pitched the whole lot of it.

Cindy

Green tomato salsa (no, it's not like tomatillos)..still have jars & jars downstairs. And peach pepper jam w/ Pamona's (tastes chalky to me).

Whtever those pickled red cherry tomatoes are called...
Self preservation prevents me from remembering the name.
Blech!
Discovered I am NOT a tarragon fan and the toms are really soft.
Blech.

Lemon lime Marmalade. It's OK, but DH doesn't like citrus (and you've GOTTA like citrus for this one) and I've cut out most refined sugars. Mmmm...now what??? I'll probably use it in some kind of a glaze or marinade.

Picking about 5# of "free cherries" from someone on craigslist. They seemed a little strange at the time, but I just wanted to finish and leave. Discovered when I got home they were some kind of tiny wild plum. PITA to pit!!

Deanna

It might have been Linda Lou's fermented pickles....somebody's fermented pickles here, can't remember who's recipe it was. Anywho, fermenting pickles in Florida does NOT mix as it's 80-90° here when pickling cukes are in season. They ended turning into a rotting, stinking, nasty mess after day two! BLEH!

And the pickled peaches I made one year. They were tasty, but after boiling, blanching, peeling, and pitting all those darn peaches, it wasn't worth it!

Fermenation for pickles is usually at temps of 60-75 degrees. Any higher and they will spoil before they start to ferment. Even for that if insufficient salt is mixed with water and the water is hard, it can also affect texture and taste, as well as spoil quickly. If your making fermented pickles keep the jars and crock at a room temp mentioned above. If you keep your house at 80-90 degrees, its just too high to even live in. In FL they do have AC in most houses.

birdhouse gourds. they grew across the garden and up on the roof (30' vines at least!). The vines had a scent that was very yucky to me. The Japanese Beetles swarmed to them. gross! After growing them and cleaning up the stinky vines, I was not at all interested in preserving them. Food only from now on!!!

Last year, I was given 2 big boxes of pluots. After 3 batches of jam(yummy) the pluots were getting riper. I decided that the fastest way to use up the rest was to pack them whole in qt jars and pack them in hot med syrup then BWB. Everything seemed to go well except all the pluots floated, the skins sloughed off and they looked awful. The family wouldn't eat them! After setting in a pantry for a couple of months they started discoloring. I ended up dumping them out.

Last fall, I made Christine Ferber's Grandmother's Pear jam with vanilla and nuts (pine nuts and walnuts). It was so elegant, lovely and tasted sublime. Until 2 months later when to my horror, the top third of the jars had started to blacken. I am almost certain that they were still good but who would eat black pears?

I think what happened was I didn't peel the walnuts properly and they black dye discoloured the whole lot. If anyone has any other ideas about what might have gone wrong, I'd love to hear them.

From that experience, and from reading here, I've completely rethought the idea of putting nuts into any jam. If I ever make it again, I'll do one small batch for my g/f who loves it without walnuts and not can it but just tell her to refrigerate and eat soon.

Irene

Pluots are prone to oxidizing as are peaches and apples. Adding ascorbic acid helps to prevent that issue. Pluots may work well if dried in halves. I have a new pluot tree here with four types grafted on. I hope to see some of the fruits in a couple of years. They are the sweetest fruit you cna enjoy and don't need any added sugar. I made some preserves with them and apricots mixed together.

I feel like I'm singing the same song, second verse. My biggest disappointment was Apple Pie Jam. Everyone was raving about it and apples are one of my favorite fruits so I jumped at the chance to try it. It never jelled, the apples were tiny little firm pieces and I think I didn't like the combination of spices in the jam. Ken tried so hard to help me with the Pomona but they are still sitting on the shelf.

The other thing I goofed on was making too much of the cranberry pepper jelly. We don't really eat much of the more savory jellies so a half dozen would have been plenty and I made twice that much.

Live and learn.

Pickled nasturtium seeds.

Don't even ask what they tasted like

My kids, it turns out, only want to eat red salsa. I have twenty jars of delicious salsa from last year, and my kids go through at least a jar of store-bought a week. I need to find a cooking recipe that uses salsa.

I use my green salsa in enchiladas (for flavoring the inside part) and for guacamole flavoring.

Apple Pie jam , I used apple cider and cut up bits of apple. I added only cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger for the spices. If the apple bits were hard, it may be they were too green. Mine were almost too old and peels were very soft. Sometimes after a few months things can set up well, so try another jar of the apple pie jam, or serve it as a sauce over vanilla ice cream. Pomona is far more forgiving and reliable compared to any other pectin type.

Pickled asparagus, I couldn't even pass these off as gifts. After a year on the shelves they were just dumped in the compost.