What Water Bath Canning Is (and What It Isn't)
Start with the fear, because it's the only thing standing between you and a productive summer, and it's easy to clear up.
Water bath canning does not give you botulism. Say it again if you need to. Done right, on high-acid food, it's one of the safest things you'll do in a kitchen. Safer than a Macey's run for more jars at 10pm, which, don't ask.
Here's the mechanism, plain. You fill jars with something acidic, jam, pickles, tomatoes with a little lemon juice added, seat a lid loosely on top, and dunk the whole jar in boiling water for a set amount of time. The heat does two jobs at once: it kills what would spoil the food, and it drives the air out so the lid seals down tight as the jar cools. That vacuum seal is what keeps everything shelf-stable afterward. No fridge. That's the entire trick.
What it will not do is safely can low-acid food. Green beans. Meat. Most vegetables on their own. That work needs a pressure canner, which runs hotter than boiling water can on its own, because low-acid food can grow botulinum spores and only that higher heat kills them reliably. That's the real source of every scary story you've heard. Somebody canned green beans in a water bath like it was jam, the heat wasn't enough, and it went bad.
I don't teach pressure canning. That's not me being coy, I just don't have it dialed in well enough to stand up here and tell you I do, so I won't pretend. Other classes cover it, other instructors love it. What I'm good at is the acid side, jam, pickles, salsa with enough vinegar in it, fruit. That's water bath's whole world, and it's a big one. You can do a lot in it.
So all that fear I carried my first summer, the sleepless nights, the two calls to the extension office, was fear aimed at the wrong category of food. Nobody had told me "canning" isn't one activity with one risk level, it's two different jobs wearing the same coat. Once that landed, I could actually enjoy this instead of treating my kitchen like a crime scene.
What this actually looks like at home
You need a big pot, deep enough that jars sit on a rack off the bottom with a couple inches of water over the tops. Jars, lids, rings. Whatever you're canning, and if it's high acid, you're set.
You do not need to sterilize your jars separately if you're processing for 10 minutes or more. I spent years boiling jars first, then canning them, then acting like I'd accomplished something, an extra hour I wasn't getting back. The boiling water bath sterilizes the jars as it processes. If a recipe calls for sterilizing ahead of a short process time, fine, follow it, but for the jam and pickle recipes running 10, 15, 20 minutes, skip it and thank me later.
The step you cannot skip is wiping the rim of the jar before the lid goes on. Every single time. One drip of peach jam on that rim and the seal won't take. I don't care how careful you were otherwise, wipe the rim. People rush past it because it feels like nothing, and it's the one step that matters most.
One real caution, no drama, just fact: the steam off that pot is hotter than the water and it'll get you before you register it's happening. I've got a scar on my wrist from reaching over a vent instead of around it, wore a bracelet to a wedding to cover it. Keep your face and arms out of the direct steam path when you lift the lid.
I've got a stack of very nice jam labels in a drawer right now. Designed them, had them printed, felt proud of myself. Never used one. They felt too nice for what I was actually doing, slapping a warm jar down on the counter. I write on masking tape instead, every time, and the fancy labels just sit there. I tell you that so you know the pretty, fantasy version of canning isn't required. The masking tape version works fine, and it's more you most of the time.
Before next time, look through your cupboards for a pot deep enough to cover jars with a couple inches of water. If nothing you own works, no problem, we'll cover options next lesson, but check now.