Posted on 10/25/2013 12:44:35 PM PDT by greeneyes
As fast as Redwood trees grow I’ll be facing the same problem in a few years plus the fibrous roots sap the goodies and moisture out of the soil.
LOL! we had our hands full installing the new fridge, getting things dispositioned into the new unit. The computer crashed, and we’ve been consumed with watching the hearings....so, alas, no new pickles! How bout you?
I will say that my garden is laughing at me. I harvested all those tomatoes, and I just went outside to look at the remnants, and I found two vine ripe cherry tomatoes, and several green tomatoes and new blossoms. Humph.
Have you had experience with okras? I noticed just now that all the limbs have dropped off. I can’t tell if it was natural or if some neighborhood kid thought it was a good idea to take them off. The few pods that I have not picked are still on it, so I’m inclined to think it was natural....but it doesn’t LOOK natural!!!!
Pickle time is over for me. I don’t like to buy cukes from the supermarket anyway. I currently have 7 cases of 12 pint jars of pickles or pickle relish. One case of various pickled squash, zukes, and beans.
Probably a couple of years or more worth.LOL All from homegrown pesticide free produce.
Don’t know much about okra - except I really don’t like to eat it, and I don’t grow it.
Gardens do have a tendency to do their own thing.LOL
I did buy the stuff to make pickles, but my wife suffered a knee injury a few days ago, so life here is in crisis mode. Plus, SIL in hospital w/chest pain, undergoing test round the clock.
We grew okry two years ago, but the plot did not have enough sunny hours, I think. Okry thrives on heat, plant’em here in SE Texas in June. We harvested a few ziplok bags of okry, but not the bumper crop that we expected.
Our water gage read 3.75 inches. The ground is soaking up
every drop. Wonderful. My plants are loving it. Hopefully
the drought has come to an end.
I just closed out the month of Oct and we had 7 1/2” against an avg of 4.7 Drought been over here, at least on paper. We sometimes go a bit between rains though and things dry out, then get 3” or 4” in a day or two. At least we dont depend on rain to water our garden and plants here.
Plants really go wild when they get some rain. They really look happy and can almost watch them grow.
Oh my! Sorry to hear about your wife’s injury! ...and the SIL’s chest pain. Hope both are on the mend rapidly!
We were pleased with the amount which our 4 little plants-turned-into-okra-jungle gave, and we had decided to let anything remaining just stay there to go to seed, so the removed branches isn’t a big deal. But since I’ve never experienced okra before, I just was interested to see if that is a normal behavior of them to shed when it gets colder.
I wish you well in your pickle making when things settle down a bit for you!
I’m very admiring of your stash of pickles!
LOL! Understand about lack of fondness of okra. It can be off-putting, especially with the oozy slime of it all.
LOL! Yes, I’m learning that the gardens DO do their own thing!
Have a good one! Looking forward to finding the new week’s garden thread. Thanks for all you do in tending our threads.
I ony canned pickles once about 30 years ago. I have done the fridge pickles since then. I like then cruncky and you can do small batches. You can even use brine from store bought vlasic pickles and throw some spears in if you are in a hurry.
oops cruncky = crunchy
Thanks for your concerns. SIL’s pain turns out to be pleurisy. Wife’s MRI tomorrow is probably looking for torn meniscus. If It is torn a little, that will heal, if torn major, it will require surgery. I had my torn a small amount, it healed, but it was painful for a long time.
Fried okry is good if you cant fathom it cooked in other stuff. Okry and tomatos is a good dish where the okry is not slimy, also in gumbo’s. Speaking of which, wife says we are having chicken gumbo tomorrow. And boy does she make it good. In fact she won the Ms. state recipe contest with her seafood gumbo recipe about 6mo ago. Now it is Blue Ribbon gumbo.
You are absolutely right on all points. We buy some Spicy Bread and Butter pickles that we are crazy over. We just slice up some baby cukes about 4”-5” long and drop them into the leftover brine. They are much crispier than the bought pickles. I may not ever can pickles again.
Hubby says since last Sunday we’ve had about 12” of rain. My back yard is still quite wet. The ivy over the arch is
going nuts. I need to put some of the vines over the top
and twine some along the top of the “legs” to hide the frame. Across the Brazos, though, they’ve received more rain
than us. When we get 3 inches, they get 4,5, or more.
If you want them done quicker you can safely leave them out on the counter for a couple of days then refrigerate. When I start a fresh batch of koshers they sit out for about 3 days, than it takes about a week after that in the fridge. I like to add whole garlic cloves too they will pickle too but it takes a little longer, you can slice them in half lengthwise too.
Right-it is the slimy aspect that I can’t stand. Thanks for the encouragement. See ya on the other thread.
When I was shuffling pickle jars in the refrigerator at lunchtime, I spotted a jar of garlic my wife is pickling. She is a garlic addict, I think, she has many ways of fixing them. She roasts them in a muffin pan, whole bulbs in each place. Then the cloves pop out and she puts the cloves in olive oil, along with some peppercorns and who knows just what. She may have posted that online, I will have to look and see.
We are all garlic addicts in our family. The only way we make mashed potatoes is with lots of roasted garlic. I slice the top off a big head, set on a piece of foil and make a little bag out of it, drizzle with olive oil, salt & pepper and close up bag - not completely. Bake at 325 for an hour. When I go to mash the potatoes I squeeze out the head. By the the cloves look like brown garlic toothpaste. YUM!!
Garlic also great with lamb. Make lots of “x’s” with a sharp paring knife into the leg meat and shove a clove down there. Just riddle that leg with garlic and roast on a spit over charcoal one hour. Dang getting hungry!
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