With a little help from Emily and Kevin, I cleaned up the garden today. It had been ignored for far too long. The weeds were taking over, and some of the plants had been attacked by bugs.
We pulled all of the weeds by hand, cut off the old ugly leaves from the zucchini (and pulled up a couple of the plants that were too far gone), cut off the worst leaves from the green beans, and planted some flowers in the “dead zone.”
Some before and after photos:
Hopefully now, with a little babying, the plants will perk up.
For future reference, it takes exactly 5 of my little cucumbers, and a half-recipe of the brine to make 2 quarts of pickles.
These went straight to the refrigerator. We love refrigerator pickles. So easy to make (not that canning is difficult, it’s just more steps and more dishes!), and the cukes stay crispy.
The only problem is waiting for them to be ready to eat! It takes a minimum of a week (2 for them to really absorb the flavor).
I checked the cucumber plants last night, and there are a lot of babies plumping up! Next pickling day, I’ll make a batch that isn’t spicy for the kids. I also want to try making some sweet pickles.
Added to this week’s grocery list: Vinegar, garlic, and dill. My little dill plants are growing, but not fast enough to be used for the pickles yet!
Tagged as:
Canning,
Cucumbers,
Pickles
Plus one more that was picked yesterday.
I’m not sure how many jars I’ll get out of these 5, maybe 2 quart jars (not packed tightly). We’ll make refrigerator pickles, using this recipe I used last year.
I’ll make some spicy for the adults, and not as spicy for the kids. Some zucchini will likely be added to the mix as well!
Tagged as:
Cucumbers,
Pickles,
Zucchini
Or “Future Pickles,” since that is what they will end up being!
My 3 cucumber plants are also parthenocarpic like the zucchini (doesn’t require pollination to set fruit). The plants had lots of female flowers with little baby cucumbers, but once the flowers fell off, the babies didn’t seem to be growing any larger. I was afraid that they weren’t going to produce.
But ignore them for 2 days, and this is what you see!
There are 5-6 cukes fattening up on the vines now. And hopefully more every day.
I’ll be using the garlic that I harvested for those pickles:
These were the only 2 remaining plants from the 9 cloves we planted last fall. You’re supposed to harvest in the fall, but the leaves were already turning brown. And I was just dying to see whether they grew into bulbs anyway! They sure did. They’re very small, but if they’d been able to grow the rest of the season, I think they’d have reached a nice size. The bulbs were very deep in the soil (clay) too. I think the freezing & thawing, plus being planted where I hadn’t loosened the soil much led to that.
We’ll try again this fall! I’d like to try growing some hard and softneck varieties this time.
Tagged as:
Cucumbers,
Garlic
The zucchini plants have gone from this:
to this:
to this:
to our first harvest!
Many more will be ready to harvest this week. We’ll be having zucchini cake for the girls’ birthday party this weekend!
Tagged as:
Zucchini
