Posted on 12/27/2013 12:25:05 PM PST by greeneyes
I have good luck with Homemade Pickle seeds. Most of the seed catalogs have it. They also will tell you which are good for pickles and which are good for slicing.
I make my pickle relish first, then put it into a water bath canner. I’ll try to dig out my recipe later tonight and post it tomorrow. I like to add sweet peppers and chopped onion to my relish.
Search pickling cucumbers. They are 4”-6” long and little or no seeds, just for making pickles.
hehee. That’s a good one.LOL
—Now all we need is Mags and Adguy on here to really stir the puddin’—
That sounds like a right wing conspiracy. lol
Cucumbers are no brainers to grow in TX. The only thing you have to know is if the variety is a slicer or a pickling one. It will say on the package. The slicers don’t hold up as well for pickling. Even if the canned ones turn out soft, they’re still fine for potato, tuna or chicken salad. Both are fine for table eating.
You’ll have to check with your extension office which varieties grow best there but it won’t be much different than A&M’s recommendations for Central Texas:
Pickling - Calypso, Carolina, Eureka, Homemade
Slicing - Burpless, Dasher II, Diva, General Lee, Gemini 7, Orient Express, Poinsett 76, Salad Bush, Straight Eight, Suyo Long, Sweet Master, Sweet Slice, Sweet Success
I’ve planted Marketmore (slicer), National Pickling, Sumter (both). They do well in our constant 100+ temps.
You might want to go with heirlooms.
Plant the seeds after the last frost because they like warm/hot and lots of sun. Let them grow up a fence/trellis. The bugs don’t bother them at all (knock on wood). They will get some powdery mildew at the end of the season but that’s easily dealt with or the season over so it doesn’t matter. Pick them while they’re still dark green and don’t let them get to the stage where they turn yellow or white on the bottom. If you want seeds for next year, that’s when you let them get large and yellow at the end of the season.
We usually run the tiller over it a few times to break things up. It’s only 11’ x 16’ Got to get my money’s worth from that tiller, and to keep it running, just in case I want to break some new ground...naw!
Happy New Year to the gardening list & hope you all had a Very Merry Christmas!
It’s supposed to warm up/ dry off here this weekend, so we’re going to get the patio straightened out to plant artichokes & onions in a couple of weeks. MAYbe strawberries, too. (What I’m anxious to get going are the turnips)
I’ve never even considered cooking with lemongrass, but we’ve been meaning to get/ plant some to help with mosquitoes for years- & never get around to it. Has anyone used it for that? Does it work?
Talk to me about your artichokes - planting times, varieties and harvest time. That’s something else I’ve put on the list to try.
I’ve had good luck growing Boston Pickling, an heirloom. They’re the “right size”, and produce cukes beyond all reason...in our climate.
This year, Jung’s included a package of “Muncher” hybrid cucumber seeds in both of my orders. They are supposed to be a slicing/salad cuke, rather than a pickler, something that we rarely have any luck at all with. I was disappointed that only 5 of the 15 seeds I planted—one packet—sprouted, thinking it was going to be a repeat of the others we had tried over the years.
Those five plants the put out so many that I had to pick most of them before they reached full size and pickle them. They made very good sweet-hot dill spears, as well as having a good flavor fresh sliced.
I still have the second packet, and will plant them again.
Durian sounds good. I need to see if my daughter can get me any more of those durian candies she gave me once.
/johnny
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/publications/veg_variety/
Try this link for cucumber varieties in your area. Blah, the local counties don’t have good websites anymore so unless you’ve printed out county specific varieties, then you’re stuck with regions. Even this isn’t that great but that’s all A&M is putting out.
That's the ideal, but if some get away for whatever reason, there are some very good 'ripe cucumber' pickle recipes out there.
My eldest SIL always made a very good spiced ripe cuke pickle. I loved them, and got the recipe from her, but it was a very time consuming process, spread over several days.
Overwinter I take kitchen scraps and such and bury then in the garden plot for juicing up the soil. Then cover with mulch. I noticed the last hole I dug uprooted some earth worms -—a good sign.
Http://www.howtogrowtobacco.com
This forum is where I started learning from. For now, we dry and store the tobacco, adding a little to tovaccovwe buy by the 12 1/2 bag, along with thefiltered tubes. We “pay” about 70¢ per pack shredding and making our own cigs. I am still getting us pipes, in case.
I think you can grow one acre of tobacco for yourself/family use. I grow about 40 plants a year here in northern Idaho. I have over 600 sq ft of raised garden beds in various areas on the property. The tobacco plants are planted around one grouping of beds. We get gnats study on the leaves, at the worst. So far... I plant calendula (marigolds) near them and in the beds as traps to click beetles. They love them. The more I squash, the less wireworm/cutworms in the soil.
Pull up all mullein near your tobacco! They stunt growth to the point of killing the tobacco plants. I plant a few short-season varieties of tobacco, having the shortest growing season in the nation, like Maine.
Hope I have been helpful.
Debbi
I'll get a Grabow pipe - well made regular style pipe. I've now read about pipes and “not all pipes are equal”. I didn't know there were so many parts to a pipe and each one could foul up. Really cheap ones won't cut it, they burn hot, and I wouldn't want the pipe to break or be hard to clean in a SHTF situation.
Thanks for all your answers. It’s a good thing I asked about cucumbers - I did not know what you all said about cucumbers. I’ll copy all your answers and then look for the right cucumber to fit what you said.
I didn’t know there were pickling kind and slicing kind. I surely would have screwed up.
None of you commented on the sweet pickling recipe I put on here. I think it’s fine because it’s so simple (except I don’t have any of those spices), but if there is something wrong with that recipe, tell me.
We had a fun Christmas with friends.
We, too have been in a bit of a weather reprieve, but today was the last day of that; still a few inches of white sky droppings on the ground, with a layer of ice from the last batch under it.
Today, it hit 47, but tomorrow, we go back to highs in the teens. It gave me a chance to make two runs into town to get water to top off the tanks: set for 3-4 weeks again, which will get us through to the next warm break.
Ordered a couple of potentillas to put in at the top of our rock retaining wall, to replace the Missouri Gooseberry bushes we finally removed: they had long since shot their wad, and were just thorny nuisances. This should add some color all summer. We ordered them from Bluestone Perennials, as we are very happy with the English lavender and sweet violets we got from them a couple of years ago.
Despite 4” of snow in their yard, I let the chickens out today. They seemed to enjoy the outing, but tired of it rather quickly; when I went up at 4, they were already all inside. Just had to turn their heater back on, and shut the door of the coop. And that reminds me that I forgot to refill the bird feeder.
Making the relish first, then canning, would be super. I could do both - make relish and whole sweet pickles. Hope you find the relish recipe.
My area should be almost the same as central Texas. I’ll look for the pickling ones you posted and I copied the rest of what you posted. Thanks.
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