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Made 10 quarts of bread and butter pickles last night (5 of each recipe) and two quarts of salsa (new recipe). That's one of the harder parts about canning- if you try a new recipe and it sucks, you either waste A LOT, or are stuck with a lot of food you don't want to eat. Hopefully one of the bread and butter recipes will be the one for me. The salsa's pretty good.

I love bread and butter pickles. My mother used to make them. Why not try smaller batches?

Hard to get the spices right. Sometimes there's only small amounts (like 1 tsp of mustard seed for a gallon of liquid), and if I made a smaller batch I'm not sure it would taste right. I did cut the salsa recipe by 2/3, but it was mostly dried ingredients, and no "broth".

I'm jealous. Wish I had the damn sunlight to amass such a garden. Seems like buying the veggies from the grocery store just to can em takes away from the allure

How many individual cucumber plants do you have?

Probably about 80. It go so bad for a bit that the neighbor had to come harvest them for about 8 or 9 days so I could get caught up with what I already had picked. His cucumbers are late, so I'll get some of his in another couple weeks, and it all works out in the end. I also think I just finished planting waaaaaay too many beets. We'll see.

How big is your garden again?

assateague wrote:Probably about 80. It go so bad for a bit that the neighbor had to come harvest them for about 8 or 9 days so I could get caught up with what I already had picked. His cucumbers are late, so I'll get some of his in another couple weeks, and it all works out in the end. I also think I just finished planting waaaaaay too many beets. We'll see.

Why are you planting beets now? Do they grow fast? I've never planted beets. When I have a real garden, I want to plant them.

I just made beet top greens tonight. I love them.

I'd love to see a picture of your cucumber patch.

Flightstopper wrote:How big is your garden again?

I think it's roughly 50 feet by 70 or 80 feet.

vincentpa wrote:

assateague wrote:Probably about 80. It go so bad for a bit that the neighbor had to come harvest them for about 8 or 9 days so I could get caught up with what I already had picked. His cucumbers are late, so I'll get some of his in another couple weeks, and it all works out in the end. I also think I just finished planting waaaaaay too many beets. We'll see.

Why are you planting beets now? Do they grow fast? I've never planted beets. When I have a real garden, I want to plant them.

I just made beet top greens tonight. I love them.

You can grow an early and a late crop of beets. They take a while to mature, but are frost tolerant to a point. Same with turnips. This time of year (at least down here) you can plant radishes, beets, turnips, some varieties of sweet corn, bush beans, some varieties of cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, brussels sprouts, and a second planting of lettuce. I'm sure there's more stuff, but that's what comes to mind. The string beans I planted are a 52 day variety, so that may be cutting it a little closer than I'd like, but they should still be fine.

My cucumber patch isn't much to look at anymore. Half of the plants are gone as of today, tilled under for room for the cabbage and beets. Watermelons are taking over like gangbusters, and I thought about sacrificing two of those hills to make some more room, but couldn't do it, since I haven't even picked a watermelon yet.

Should try mixing up a batch of sweet and spicy. My buddies grandpa makes bread and butter and habanero pickles that are awesome then you just feel the heat come up your throat