The garden is beginning to push out the first of the many promised goodies of the year. While I’ve been pulling and sharing three lettuce types for a couple of weeks, it looks like my variety of cherry tomatoes called ‘Katinka’ are coming into their own. I’ve got 5 of these plants, three are pruned to a single vine while the other two have two vines each. The fruit when mature is orange/gold and they are a blast fresh from the plant.
This is the first year that I’ve pruned my cuc’s to a single vine and the first year that I’ve gone with fermenting them instead of pickling with vinegar and canning. I’ve never previously pruned a cucumber plant, and it was painful. Here is a video that explains it better than I ever could:
It’s painful because I worked so hard to get them from a seed to a seedling, through the transplant, past the frost, and finally growing on a trellis. To cut them back is counter intuitive.
I pulled enough yesterday afternoon for two quarts of pickles. I drove over to the Puncheon Church of Christ and filled 12 quart jars from the hillside spring and boiled it to get rid of the bad stuff/things. I figure that I’ll be putting up several quarts per week so I’ll have extra water prepared. I’m going with spring water for all my ferments from now on, the crap that comes out of the faucet just doesn’t cut it. Here is a re-post of the spring from earlier this year:
I pickled using 2 TBLS salt per quart of water (vice quart of pickles) and added dill seed, thyme, garlic, fresh cracked black pepper, a touch of cumin and a little bit of tea out of a ‘Red Diamond’ tea bag. I hear that the tannins in black tea (and in grape leaves) will keep the pickles crisp for a good long while.
Glass weights topped off inside with a loose fitting lid outside and I was done. Will know in about 3 days if/how I need to adjust.
I see that my Patty Pan squash has begun to yield. There are few things better than roasting halved Patty Pan with butter and seasoning as a topping. Good eats!