Garden update

So, this is the year that both the tomatoes and the cucumbers went all-in.  I've got somewhere around fifteen pounds of tomatoes on the table right now, and that's after three batches of salsa and one of ketchup.

tomatoes on the dining room table

The ketchup was not a difficult process, just long, and I'm getting a food mill so that when I make sauce I can get all the seeds out.

thickening the ketchup

This was also a summer of squash.  We ate a lot of it, and there's a couple on the counter that we either need to eat or they're going to get composted soonish.

so many squash

The cucumbers went hard for about three weeks and then slowed down to a slightly faster than we can eat trickle.  The first thing I made was relish.

sweet relish before adding the vinegar

I ended up making three kinds of pickles besides relish: sweet spears, dill spears, and dill slices.  It took me a while to find reasonably-priced pickle crisp, so only the dill spears got it.

sweet pickle spears

Besides the garden, I moved the planters to the patio this year and put flowers in them.  Apparently monarchs like zinnias?  I'll probably plant more of these next year since they've been pretty prolific and low-maintenance.

zinnias with butterfly

Annual innudation of cucumbers

Initially, it was all about the peas.  Three quarts of unshelled peas, that shelled down to about two cups.  The peas are about done now.  The zucchini are pretty steady, never overwhelming; I've just got the three plants.

The peppers are a bit random, and the tomatoes, while trickling in at the grape size, aren't ready yet.

But the cucumbers.

 

This summer has been frequently unusually cool, but give them a week at 80+ degrees, and...

Tiny snail gave me an excuse to toss this one in the compost.  It was probably fine, but I picked seven others that day, and tiny snail.  (You may have to zoom in to see it.)

So I went out to check the cucumbers again this morning, and this is what I came back in with.

I've got what will be three quarts of pickle relish brining on the stove now, but I also have a baker's dozen more cucumbers on the counter still.  I may have to make some other kind of pickles in addition.

Why plant so many cucumbers, you might ask.  I have one row, six plants, partly trellised.  I thought backing it off (I've planted three times that many before) would be enough.  Nope.  I like cucumbers, but unlike zucchini, which is easy enough to turn into lasagna or zucchini bread or some chop up into stir fry and keep up with it, the cucumbers produce in volume enough to make it difficult to keep on top of.

So there will probably be more pickles.

At least it's not cherry tomatoes again!  (Yet.)

Pickles

So, yeah.  Cucumbers.  I'm at the point where when I go out to mow today, the cucumber vines that have breached the border of their bed will no longer be spared.

I had about a dozen cucumbers on my counter this morning; now there are five.  The rest?  Here:

Or rather, they're in that crock, down in the basement, because our basement is 81 degrees right now pretty steadily, and that's the closest I'm going to get to a constant 86 without making them available to mice and such.

I don't actually like pickles, but my husband does.  He did not, however, like the last recipe I tried for them, and I think it's because he's used to salt-cured pickles.  The USDA put out a bulletin on making fermented pickles 90 years ago (called... "Making Fermented Pickles"), which I eventually tracked down on Google books.

Besides cucumbers, I also had a good quantity of dill out back (had, since it's in the pickling crock now), and I picked up a one gallon pickling crock at Ace Hardware for - after the member discount - less than $20.  Now that I know how much fits in one, maybe I should have gotten the two gallon.  I might yet to try making sauerkraut.

Anyway, with the mandolin we got for making zucchini lasagna, slicing up the cucumbers was fast, the brine was just a quarter of the brine recipe (they use a four gallon jar or crock as the default small batch), and I added dill and a bit of coriander for flavor.  I put a saucer on top since it fit well enough, and after I took it downstairs, I put a quart jar full of water on top of the plate as a weight.

Now I just have to remember to check it periodically to skim off the scum, and we should have pickles in 10-14 days.