Novato resident Marinda Freeman, the former executive director of Martha Stewart Catering and a cooking class instructor in New York in the 1980s, brings her cuisine and teaching skills to the Marin Art and Garden Center at noon June 14 for a class on canning summer fruit.

Participants in the hands-on, four-hour class will take home jars of handcrafted strawberry-lemon jam, apricot jam and apricot chutney. Admission is $120. Register at maringarden.org/calendar.

“I grew up with my grandmother making jams,” she said. “When I canceled my wedding in the 1970s, my aunt came out and we made grape jelly and another fruit jam. I’ve been jamming ever since.”

Have no fear, beginner jammers.

“I think making jam is easy,” she said. “You need some specific tools, to follow the process, have some patience — you can’t hurry the jam — and learn how to test when the jam is ready to can.”

The hardest part is “not knowing what to do or how to start.”

In previous classes, though, she’s found that afterward “everyone was eager and excited to make more jam at home.”

And “the sky’s the limit,” she said. “Jams, chutneys, relishes, butters and even pickled vegetables. I make an Italian lemon marmalade that’s super easy. With the abundance we have here in California, there are so many options.”

This class will feature ripe organic fruit from the farmers markets and apricots from a “wonderful family farm in the (Central) Valley” from which she’s ordered apricots for decades.

Freeman considers jam as “love in a jar” and gives jars of jam as holiday gifts.

If you grow fruits in your backyard — or buy them fresh — this class will help you learn how to make the most of these summer goodies.

PJ Bremier writes on home, garden, design and entertaining topics every Saturday. She may be contacted at P.O. Box 412, Kentfield 94914, or at pj@pjbremier.com.