This has not been a good year for cucumbers. For the past several years, I have grown Armenian cucumbers. These are not cucumbers at all botanically, but rather a variety of muskmelon. I don't like them quite as much as real cucumbers--they have a faint taste of muskmelon that is detectable when eating the Armenian cucumbers raw--but they have the great advantage of never getting bitter. Even when they grow to huge sizes, they're never bitter. This was a frequent problem I had with true cucumbers. Also, the Armenian cucumbers make excellent refrigerator pickles, which is my main use for cucumbers.
This year, I planted the Armenian cucumbers, and then I decided to try again with pickling cucumbers. I noticed early in the summer that the grasshoppers had eaten only the cucumber vines that were already climbing. They had left the vines still low on the ground. I think it was the Armenian cucumber vines they ate, because I have zero Armenian cucumbers.
I am getting some cucumbers, but they are almost all bitter. Predictably. So I haven't made any pickles from them.
However! One of the former teachers at school showed up to the county fair with lots of cucumbers and mentioned she's been getting great quantities. So I texted her to ask if she would be willing to sell me some cucumbers so I could make pickles. She responded that she wouldn't sell them, but she'd be happy to take some pickles.
Thus, the year's first refrigerator dills have been stowed away.
We already ate one of the pint jars of dill pickles. Rather than throw away the pickling liquid, however, I re-heated it in the microwave and used it to pickle some carrot ribbons.
I do this a lot with the liquid from the pickled onion slivers I almost always have in the refrigerator now. When I finish the onions the first time, I either re-heat the liquid and pickle more onions, or I pickle (store) radish slices.
This way I always have some kind of pickle on hand. I only use the pickling liquid once more before dumping it, but at least I get more than one use out of it. I was dismayed to see a gallon of white vinegar priced at over four dollars last week at the store, so I feel like the less of it I have to use, the better.
Didn't vinegar used to be cheap? I feel like even the gallon of vinegar was like two or three dollars not too long ago. But maybe I'm misremembering.
Anyway. We have pickles, and that makes everyone happy.
9 comments:
Same experience with white vinegar prices here in Florida. Over $4 in my regular grocery store and not much better at the dollar store if they have it at all. -- Ringo
I think vinegar was like $2 per gallon not long ago. And now almost four by me. I use it for cleaning and occasionally in cooking.
Did the grasshopper hit higher elevations worse? Or are they just random clumps?
I remember my grandfather growing muskmelons. Those things would be huge but they were very sweet.
We have had great luck with the Russian Pickling cucumber variety. It's the only one so far that hasn't given us bitter cucumbers. Ever. Even when it's dry and hot.
BJ's white vinegar is still just over $2. Good call on the reuse of the brine. Mil (who never remembers to eat pickles).
Yes, I think they were worse up here on our plateau, but they just stuck around our almost-ghost village even after they had moved on everywhere else. I think it's because of all the brushy abandoned lots that give them lots of overgrown plants to hide in.
Melons of any kind don't grow well here --the nights tend to be too cool all summer--but these faux cucumbers do very well.
Thank you! I will look for those for next year. I am very disappointed every time I harvest a cucumber that I can't eat.
I can't imagine why this is. It's not as if white vinegar is dependent on a particular harvest. Maybe the cost of the containers has gone up for the distributors?
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