I was up to 5 lbs. i
n cucumbers, meaning it was time to make a bunch more pickles. I even got Drew in on the action to help me out.
My coworker brought me a bag full of squash that they had grown. So while waiting on the pickles to soak, I made zucchini bread and sliced, blanched, and froze the rest of the squash to use later. I’m ready for nap and I haven’t even processed the pickles yet.
Zucchini bread
Boiling squash
I believe our cucumber plants have a problem. For the past week or so they have been getting droopy leaves that seems to get worse everyday. Eventually they crinkle up and die.
I did a little research and found that there is a cucumber beetle (I’ve seen the yellow and black spotted variety) that can infect your cucumber plants with bacterial wilt. Once they do this, there is really no way to save the plant. I’m just happy that we’ve already gotten 56 cucumbers. I’ve also seen the squash bug on our cucumbers, which apparently does damage as well. Well, it’s been a good run. Maybe next year we will cover our plants until they bloom to keep these guys from laying eggs on the leaves.
I just picked a few okra. I think I let two of them get a bit too long. Since I’ve never cooked okra before I may go ahead and freeze these to buy me some time while I figure out what to do with them and wait for more to be ready for harvest.
Our beans went out this weekend. I started them inside and sprinkled them with pepper after transplanting them outside hoping that will keep the vole/chipmunk/varmint from eating them like they did our corn crop.
Beans
I picked a bunch of cucumbers and our very first eggplant today. Time to make a cucumber salad.
One thing I’ve been loving is making my own chicken broth. It is practically free because we would have bought chicken to eat anyways. I finally found a place that has free range chicken. It’s called A Place on Earth CSA in Henry County and they said they process their chickens in June. I ordered 5 chickens just to try it out and I made our first roast chicken last night.
I took all the drippings from the roasting pan and the leftover bones and bits, threw it in the crock pot last night, and filled it with water. This morning I woke to chicken broth.
I ended up with 10 cups of broth which I freeze in glass jars that I’ve collected from tomato sauce, apple sauce, sauerkraut, etc. Super easy and super free.
Back in early March, Drew threw together this grow light set up. He built the wooden frame and we bought the light from a hardware store. It allows me to change the chain length as the plants grow.
Now we are working on beans and squash. The beans are doing great but only 1 out of 3 squash has sprouted.
They’re getting big! We got them on April 17th when they were just a day or two old. That means they are about 2 months and 2 weeks old. I read that chickens start laying eggs between their 16th and 24th week.
Just a few days after making sweet pickles, I had about 10 cucumbers ready for harvest. Looks like dill pickles it is.
I added three sprigs of dill, 2 garlic cloves, and 1/4 tsp. of red pepper flakes to each jar. I sliced the cucumbers in rounds so that they would be perfect for hamburgers. I made up a brine of 3 cups water, 2 cups vinegar, and 1/4 cup pickling salt. After the jars were filled with cucumbers I added in the brine leaving 1/2 inch of head space.
Finished them off by processing the jars for 10 minutes.
Just have to wait 4-6 weeks to try them out!
With so many cucumbers growing like crazy, I decided to try my hand at making sweet pickles. I based my process on the Mrs. Wages recipe.
First, I soaked them in lime water most of the day and then ice water for 3 hours.
Lime Water
Then I made up the syrup, soaked the cucumbers in that overnight, and boiled them in the morning.
I packed it all into jars and processed the jars for 10 minutes. I had cut down the recipe since I was only working with three jars, but I ended up running out of the syrup. I had to throw together some more. Next time I’ll have to adjust.
Luckily, all of the jars sealed. I won’t know if it is a complete success until they’ve had time to soak up all the flavor.
Now here we are in late June all caught up. Everything is growing. The lettuce produced for us during May up until a week ago and the cucumbers are exploding. Only three onion plants, out of 12, survived. The hot peppers are doing well but the bell peppers seem a bit puny. In the future I would like to plant the lettuce in succession so that it isn’t all ready at once.
Spaghetti Squash
Cucumber
Sungold Cherry Tomato
Husk Cherry Tomato
Zuta Pepper
Eggplant
Tomato
Bell Pepper
Jalapeno
Booming garden
