canning and bottling for beginners?

I caved in last night and ordered the River Cottage book of preserving from Amazon - hopefully this will be more informative. I even dreamt about bottling last night!! Presumably providing that the lids remain concave, then even if there are any tiny bubbles inside this is OK? Just don't want to be responsible for any banner headlines on the tabloids about families coming to grief with botulism!!

I don't think botulism would be a problem with acidic fruits like rhubarb, apples etc. I think you have started with something very safe and unlikely to cause problems. Sorry, bit of a bastard day today, so haven't got around to looking at my preserving book yet.

Sorry you've had a bad day - thank you for being reassuring!

Right - these are the salient points from my preserving book:
"Success in bottling depends on three things: heating the fruit sufficiently; closing the bottles while they are hot; and making sure that airtight jars are used. Some fruits need more heating than others, and if the fruit is tightly packed in the jar so that there is less than 1/4 pint syrup/water in a 1lb jar, it needs longer heating than a looser pack" "Rhubarb is treated like soft fruit for bottling (ie young, fresh and rinse in clean, cold water). Young spring rhubarb is the best, cut into 1"-2" lengths" "Fruit may be bottled in water or syrup. Fruit bottled in syrup keeps a better flavour and is ready for use when the bottles are opened, but it may rise a little in the bottles. The quantity of sugar can be varied. A suitable strength for most fruits is made from 1lb sugar to 2 pints water, sufficient for about eight 1lb jars. This should be boiled for 1 minute; it may be needed hot or cold according to the method used."

That's pretty much it, and it then gives a table with all the timings for the different methods. For rhubarb bottled using the oven method, the following instructions:
Preheat oven to 150 degrees C. Add boiling syrup/water before processing. Process for 40-50 mins for 1lb-4lbs, 55-70 mins for 5lb-10lbs

There are additional instructions on choosing jars, checking that seals are good etc, but it sounds as if you already know all that. My book covers bottling fruit only. It says "Vegetables should never be bottled in the same way as fruit. Much higher processing temperatures are required......." etc etc etc. It does cover tomatoes, to which are added 1/4 teaspoon citric acid or 2 teaspoons lemon juice per 1lb tomatoes, the acid ensuring safe bottling.

I've never used any other book, and I've never had a problem.

Thank you for all that information. It sounds as if I've done more or less what your book says, so hopefully it'll be OK.

Sorry, didn't notice the q re bubbles before - yes perfectly normal. Nothing to worry about.

Am just about to open a bottle of last year's rhubarb ( to make way for new batches) and make rhubarb and custard ice cream in fact.

That sounds lovely! Thanks for the advice Billy - you and Freebird have been great.