gardening

Submerged Pickles More accurately, it will be a crock of pickles in 7 days. Currently, it's a crock of pickling cucumbers in brine.

Back in June, Yarndiva of Sew Old - Sew New commented on my first silk chiffon tunic post. Then I followed her back to her blog and discovered her Best Dill Pickles post. And so I planted some pickling cucumbers.
Now I have picked some pickling cucumbers and started them pickling!
Crock of Pickles
I hounded her quite a bit with pickling-noob questions. And only just noticed, upon checking that post again, that she has a picture of the salt and pickling spice that she used. And it's the same kosher salt that I got that says that it can be used in place of pickling salt, so I was thinking that maybe I'd gotten the wrong stuff. (Note to self: always look at the big pictures!)

I found that I had trouble finding proper pickling vessels. I ended up taking "crock" literally and using the crock from my crock pot. I probably should have picked the pickling cucumbers when they were smaller. Smaller cucumbers would have meant more flexibility with containers. I thought maybe I could fit them into a vase, but I couldn't. So this time it's a crock. Next time it'll be smaller pickles in a vase. That would definitely look better while they're pickling. I had trouble finding something that would work to weight the top to keep the pickling cucumbers submerged. I ended up using the lid from my Pyrex mixing bowl, because I needed something rather large in order to keep them all submerged. This is not a very photogenic pickling situation.

Kris thinks I'm crazy for wanting the cucumbers to look pretty while they're pickling, but it's not just in the fridge that I want them to look pretty. A crock pot crock and a Pyrex mixing bowl lid don't make for pretty blog pictures either! Definitely not as photogenic as Yarndiva's milk jar.

Basil for Pesto Basil Stuffed into Measuring Cup Pesto and Mess For the first time ever (I think) I made pesto all by myself!

I started with an absurd amount of basil. My basil in general is absurd. All of the basil you see in the bottom two pictures, that casserole-dish full of basil... all that was from pruning! I removed a couple large branches from one of the plants that was overshadowing my cilantro (and a couple branches from the marigold on the other side that was contributing to the buried cilantro.) The rest is just from taking off the starting-to-approach-flowering tops.

So basil-basil-basil.

I'd ordered a two-pound bag of bulk pine nuts from Amzaon, which worked out quite well. There were various warnings about "pine mouth" from Chinese pine nuts, but these were American and seem quite good. I ended up using about a cup of them in this batch.

While I was looking up info before I started, I came across this page on How To:Simplify that says that if you're going to freeze the pesto, you shouldn't add the Parmesan cheese right away, but right before serving it. So I added a little bit of the Parmasian, but figure on adding most of it as I use the pesto.

I used the blender for most of the process, but used the salsa-maker towards the end-- at the point where it was getting to be too much and too think for the blender to be effective, and when I was wanting to give it a bit of texture rather than make it totally pureed.

Yes, I did manage to make all that basil fit into that measuring cup. I'm thinking that when they say "two cups fresh packed basil leaves" they probably don't mean quite such extreme stuffing!

As you can see, I produced an entire salsa-maker full of finished [minus most of the Parmesan cheese] pesto. I froze an icing container full, and put a butter container full into the fridge.

Really, I need better pesto storage. A whole icing container full is really more than I'm going to want to defrost at any one time. So an idea came up in the PR chat [of course.] Ice cube trays! Freeze the pesto in ice cube trays, then store the frozen pesto-cubes in freezer bags.

So now I need ice cube trays. So, as usual, I headed over to Amazon to see what was available in the way of ice cube trays. I'm thinking I'll go with the silicone trays. these Jumbo-Size Silicone Ice-Cube Trays seem like they'd be about what I need. But of course I couldn't stop there, I had to keep looking.

And that's when I saw the Pi Symbol Ice Cube Tray! Probably not good for pesto storage, but oh-so-nifty! I'm getting a kick out of the Set of Heart and Stars Ice Cube Trays too, and those probably would be good for freezing pesto!
There are even Ducky Trays and Musical Note Trays! Decisions, decisions.

---

Big Garden (July 11, 2011) Pumpkins (July 11, 2011) Cabbage and Cucumbers (July 11, 2011) Watermelon (July 11, 2011)
Yes, I know this garden post is overdue. I have so much trouble getting garden pictures that I like. Even growing everything in well spaced, significantly raised rows, with vine plants grown mostly up, everything just looks jumbled.

And I need so many pictures in order to give much of a real view-- especially since I have so many plants interspersed, rather than having each type of plant together.

The tomatoes are all staked to bamboo. Most of the vine plants are grown up short sections of fence, sometimes supplemented with bamboo for added stability. The cucumbers are particularly suited to growing up fences and bamboo trellises.

The pumpkins took off really fast. I ended up attaching a bit of fencing to a pole in the center, and starting them growing up that. I added some bamboo to that rig, although the only actual pumpkins I can see growing are the ones along the back fence.

The watermelons are growing up a section of fence attached to a bamboo support (vertical with a couple of diagonal pieces to keep it steady--you can see that in the bottom picture) and the cantaloupes are growing up a section of fence between 5-foot garden U-style posts I picked up at Lowes specifically for that purpose. (Like these: U-style Fence Post 5')

The main garden fence uses much shorter posts, and the cucumbers are using slightly longer ones I'd gotten from my mom. (Mostly they're using the two-foot fencing, though. I like the plant-support fencing not to reach all the way to the ground.) I'll have to invest in some more taller ones for next year, I'm very fond of the vertical growing. I also have one 6' fencepost pole that I haven't put into use yet. I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to use, so I picked up a couple of different options to try. While I dug holes for the bamboo before putting in the tomatoes (bamboo doesn't hold up so well to pounding), fence-posts I put in with a sledgehammer, so I did have to make sure I wasn't using any posts that would be too tall for me to reach to pound into the ground.
(Actually, perhaps it's an Engineer Hammer. It appears to be that one, although most of the writing on the sticker is worn off, so I'm not sure. I haven't weighed it.)

I had the bush beans covered with tulle while the plants were developing, to minimize insect damage; my green bean crops last year were not good. I eventually had to remove the tulle so that the bees could pollinate, though. I'm avoiding much pesticide on the green beans for the same reason, but I am using bug-killers on most of the other plants. I have upside-down soda cases on either side of the green beans to help keep the edges off the ground.

Most of the lettuce is protected by cages. Some are regular wire garden fencing (the same stuff that's around the outside of the garden and that supports most of the vines) shaped to enclose the plants and some are modular wire storage cubes.

There's some cabbage at the back of the garden. I'm protecting that from pests mainly with a combination of Diatomaceous Earth and Dipel Dust (Although I got the Dipel locally and it's not the kind with the cayenne in it. I'll probably try the stuff with cayenne next time. Through much of last summer I was actually making jalapeno-seed "tea" to spray onto my plants to repel pests.)

The bugs have been really bad this year, so I did break down and buy some Ortho Bug-B-Gon MAX Dust and Sevin Dust. I'll definitely be buying more of the Bug-B-Gone-- that duster bottle is about a zillion times easier to get where I want it than the shaker cans that the Sevin comes in. The shaker cans aren't bad for low-to-the-ground things like my savagely-bug-attacked pepper plants, but applying it to the cucumber plants to keep away the awful bugs that cause bacterial wilt is quite awkward.

Wow, I didn't realize how long it had been since my last garden progress post! I'd taken some pictures since then, but hadn't gotten around to editing them down to the relevant parts, labeling them, and posting them. Whoops!

Indoor Stevia Seedling Outdoor Stevia Seedling I split up my stevia seedlings; one inside and one outside. The leaves on the outside one look a bit gnarled, but it's also significantly stouter than the indoor seedling. The indoor seedling taller, but distinctly more fragile.

The windowsill really doesn't get quite enough light. It's good for starting seeds, but not quite enough for decent growth. In the fall I'll probably put in a grow light to supplement the light so I can keep a few plants going through the winter. Herbs at least, but it would be nice to keep at least a few vegetables going.

The rest of the garden is doing more or less okay. I'm having big bug problems. The cucumber beetles are bad. And of course, so are the stink bugs. Really bad. I've been using diatomaceous earth, Dipel, and insecticidal soap, and tulle floating row covers, and they all help some.. but not quite enough. I finally bit the bullet and ordered Sevin. I'm getting some cucumber wilt. I've read that you diagnose bacterial wilt by breaking the stem and seeing if there's a milky sap inside and it'll be kinda sticky. It's not, but there's still some kind of wilt problem. And this was a strain that was supposedly disease resistant.. maybe just not to bacterial wilt, though. So I set up another fence for cucumbers, will plant some more, and will use the Sevin. I may order some more seeds too, of one of the really good disease-resistant varieties.