How Much is a Bushel and a Peck?

Now that harvest time is here, gardeners and home canners are gathering up crates and bushel baskets of fresh produce to freeze or can for the months ahead. It is during harvest time that one hears questions about the weight of a bushel, how many pints are in a flat of berries, or how much apple jelly can be made from a peck of quince apples.

How much is a bushel?

A bushel as a measurement can be a little tricky to understand because it measures the volume of your produce instead measuring it by the pound. In dry measurements, a bushel equals 8 gallons or 32 quarts of a commodity.

The bushel was originally used as measurement for grain but over the centuries, eventually came to be the standard for measuring produce of all types. However, because a bushel measured the volume and not weight, buyers quickly discovered that a bushel basket of apples far outweighed a bushel of beet greens or snap peas, but weighed considerably less than a bushel of corn. To clear up some of the confusion of how much a bushel of apples, onions, wheat, or corn should weigh, someone came up with the idea of assigning a standard bushel weight to each type of commodity. A bushel of apples was determined to weigh on average about 46 pounds, while a bushel of potatoes was set at 60 pounds, unhusked corn at 70 pounds, and so on. While farmers might have these numbers memorized, us city folk probably should refer to the USDA standardized list of bushel weights when trying to estimate the yield of a specific product. The complete list of bushel weights for all types of produce and other commodities can be viewed here.

Knowing the weight of a bushel will help canners estimate the yield they can expect from a basket of veggies and fruits. For home canning or freezing, a good rule of thumb to remember is that it takes between 2.5 - 3 pounds of fruit or vegetable to yield one quart prepared.

How much is in a peck?

When Peter Piper picked his peck of pickled peppers, he picked the equivalent of 1/4 of a bushel. While no one knows the origin of this word nor how it came to be a unit of measurement, we do know that Peter's peck of pickled peppers amounted to the equivalent of 2 gallons of dry weight, or 10 to 14 pounds.

How much is in a barrel?

Occasionally I'll run across this archaic system of measurement in one of my ancient cookbooks. A barrel is a unit of capacity that holds 3 bushels.

How much weight is in a flat?

Where I live, berries are often sold by the "flat", a cardboard box measuring somewhere around 12 x 24 inches. A full flat usually contains 12 pints and half flats contain six. Like other types of produce, the weight does vary depending on the type of berry purchase. Since most berry jam and jelly recipes call for volume instead of weight, a good rule to remember is that 6 pints of berries will yield about 3 pints of jam.

Last but not least.... after the produce has been harvested and the ground tilled under for the winter, die hard gardeners like myself put pencil to paper and start our plans for next year's vegetable garden. Along with plotting out where the veggies are to be planted, we'll try to figure out how many yards of chicken manure will be needed for a space yea long and so deep. To help us in our calculations, it helps to remember that a yard of chicken manure, top soil, or other ground amenity is equivalent to 27 cubic feet or 7 standard sized wheelbarrow loads.