Refrigerator pickles

We planted Edmonson and Japanese Long cucumbers and are now experiencing massive cucumber overload.

I'm brine pickling some cucumbers whole, but in an effort to keep up with the pace of production, I made a giant batch of "refrigerator pickles" too (ingredients shown above).

My refrigerator pickles are loosely based on Mollie Katzen's Wilted Cucumber Salad recipe, which has been a summer favorite of mine for years. Here's her recipe, from the Enchanted Broccoli Forest:

Wilted Cucumber Salad

Make this a day ahead so the cucumbers can fully absorb their marinade. This keeps beautifully in the refrigerator for 2 weeks or more.

2/3 cup vinegar (wine or cider)

1/3 cup water

4 Tbs. honey or sugar

1 tsp. salt

1/2 cup thinly sliced red onion

4 medium-sized cukes, peeled, seeded and thinly sliced

fresh black pepper to taste

2 Tbs. minced fresh dill

Combine the vinegar, water, honey or sugar, and salt in a small saucepan. Heat just to the boiling point, then remove from heat. Place the onion and cucumber slices in a medium-large bowl, and add the hot liquid. Cool to room temp, add pepper and dill. Transfer to a jar with a tightly fitting lid. Chill until cold.

I like to add a fair amount of coarsely chopped flat-leaf parsley to this mix, and I use considerably less honey (about half of what Mollie calls for) and NO sugar! I'm not categorically opposed to sugar, but honey tastes a lot better in this recipe to me.

For this batch I increased the volume of everything but the sweetener in this by about 6 times, and threw in a bunch of fresh dill flowers and leaves.

Here's the finished product -- just shy of 5 quarts of refrigerator pickles. We'll eat some tonight with friends along with a bunch of other summer salads.

Making these is a warm reminder of my gratitude to Mollie Katzen, who was a huge part of my food education. I cooked from her classic vegetarian cookbooks all through high school and college and into my "grown up" years.... She introduced me to Swiss Chard, helped me survive as a teenage vegetarian in the sticks, and made me feel like I was part of a community that cared about food for years before I actually experienced that community in person.

I hardly ever use recipes any more, and if I do, I can't help but modify them (add parsley, decrease honey) but I still keep the old Moosewoods around as reference books, right beside "The Joy" in every kitchen I've ever established over the past dozen years. Thanks Mollie!

July gardening....

Planting the last of the black beans tonight....after much very butch digging by Solon and Topher last eve (looking quite enthusiastic at right).

And the garden is busting out...see pictures below including very beautiful orange poppies...last night we had the first of the zephyr squash, with sauteed squash blossoms. Yum.

More on garlic....

All week, CF has been digging garlic. We've tied up garlic with various friends and family as it's been harvested, and there is now a formidable amount hanging on the north side of our house under the porch roof (some of which is pictured at left).

I thought it merited a couple more photos ... here's my dad and Christopher and some German Brown that they dug and hung.

There's still more in the ground, but I imagine it will all be harvested by the first of July...

Garlic harvest

Last night we started digging up the garlic, and as luck would have it, Melissa was here to school us in a far better method than we used last year for hanging it up to dry.

While I was cooking up chard, kale, mustards, and herbs to toss with pasta for dinner, Christopher and Melissa tied up all of the Inchelium Red and Polish Hardneck. Bud kept us entertained with a running stream of conspiracy theory and Mr. T videos.

Inchelium Red

This morning Christopher pulled the next variety of garlic, Transylvanian Artichoke, which turned out to be whoppingly huge.

Frankie looked on, stoned on catnip, from an adjoining garlic bed.


Frankie tripping

While C. pulled Transylvanian, I planted the last of the zephyr squash starts with Black Oil Seed sunflowers and Cherokee black beans in the bed where the Inchelium and Polish garlic had come out last eve. We used this same succession planting last year--the timing works well and the legumes seem to build the soil after the garlic is done.
Transylvanian Artichoke

Fat, beautiful parsleyworm...and some less desirable garden vistors

Watering the garden this evening, I came across this beautiful creature (at left) in the towering fennel.

Thanks to the internet, I was able to perfom a quick google ("fat black yellow striped caterpillar") and discover that s/he is a parsleyworm, which is actually the caterpillar stage of the black swallowtail butterfly.

Thankfully, I did not squish before googling. After attending "Bug Church" at the Organic Growers School, I know better.

It turns out that they don't eat much and really don't affect the health of their host plants unless the plant is already weak or there is a major infestation.

In any case, this caterpillar was gorgeous. And really fat. I wonder if s/he will make it to butterflydom or get eaten by a bird first? Apparently they have "a forked, glandular process behind the head that can be everted to emit a strong odor distasteful to predators." (Arthropod Museum Notes.)


So after the photo shoot, the parsleyworm went back to her normal life and I moved on to finish watering and weeding.

A few minutes later I came across a spotted cucumber beetle and then some eggs that turned out to be cucumber beetle eggs (see below). The spotted and striped cuke beetles, tied for second place most despised insect in my life (after the mexican bean beetle), were swiftly executed (squished, drowned in steeping compost tea - what a way to go).

Cabbage worm update

So the cabbage worms are doing what they do best: eating cabbage. We sprayed BT on the cabbage yesterday, and we'll hit the rest of the brassicas today.

I learned from Sandi that Christopher's pool net method is not entirely unique. She uses a badminten racket for cabbage moth control (see below).

We'll be able to save these cabbages, but I felt a blood lust for cabbage worms after seeing the damage. Here's to helpful bacteria (BT) and the good old-fashioned methods, too.

Cabbage worms

Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of Christopher in his pajamas in the garden catching cabbage moths with a swimming pool net. So far, our haphazard methods of cabbage moth/worm control have been limited to Christopher's antics with the swimming pool net and my pick-n-squish endeavors with the larvae.

Nonetheless, we're not noticing too much damage from the larvae -- cabbage worms -- yet, but we're vigilant because there are lots of the pretty white moths (pictured above) around and we have created a very enticing brassica buffet of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, various kales, and collards.

While amusing to our neighbors, the pool net method is probably not good enough to keep down the cabbage moth damage through the season. And the plants are doing so well that pick and squish is getting to be a time-consuming chore. Most organic pest experts recommend spraying with BT to kill the larvae. Here's a great gardening blog--veggiegardeningtips--with a post on cabbage worm control, for example.

We'll see if we resort to BT....it's looking likely....but I'll probably also try planting dill around the brassicas, which is said to repel both aphids and cabbage moths. Even if it doesn't work, it's beautiful, attracts beneficials, and we'll use it for pickles, potato salad, sauerkraut, and other delights. See the wiki companion planting entry for more on dill and other companion plants for pest control.

Growing Nontoxic Food...starting with seeds

I've been spending lots of time with seed catalogues lately. Two of my favorites that I'd forgotten about til I got their catalogues in the mail are:

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
(a worker-owned co-op selling organic heirloom seeds, and just up the road in Virginia)

and

Abundant Life Seed Company
(also 100% organic seeds, heirlooms, and wonderful, though across the country)