Dill Fridge Pickles

It's been a long time without a post, but that's what a newborn will do to your free time. I've been meaning to post this since I made my first batch of the year a month ago, but now it's delayed and sans photos. Better than nothing, though.

Here's a great recipe for refrigerator pickles. I've never gotten into the hassle of canning, although I want to try canning some tomatoes eventually. But pickles stay so crisp and fresh when you don't can them. By simply refrigerating these pickles, they'll keep for up to a year, but I don't know why you'd want to keep them that long. They're too good to let sit around!

Here's a tip before you start. Boil the water and let it start cooling before you prepare the other ingredients.

4 quarts of 4" cucumbers, just picked and firm
-If your cukes have been sitting in the fridge for a few days, soak them in ice water for an hour or so to crisp them up.
-When I only have access to larger cukes, I cut them in half, spoon out the seeds, and then cut them into spears.

8 heads of dill
4 cloves of garlic
1 jalapeno or other hot pepper, sliced (include seeds and pulp for full heat)
1/4 tsp mustard seed
1/4 tsp celery seed
1/4 tsp pickling spice (optional)
-My philosophy with all of the above seasoning is the more the better. Feel free to add more of whatever you like best in your pickles.

1 quart vinegar
3 quarts water
3/4 cups salt

1. Boil water. Allow to cool completely.
2. Mix vinegar, water, and salt.
3. Disperse all other ingredients as evenly as possible in your jar(s).
4. Pour brine into jars, completely covering ingredients.
5. Allow to cure in fridge for at least a week.

Any other good refrigerator pickles recipes out there?

Havahart

Two down!

Early July Notes

No time for photos now, but it's time for some updates on the garden.

• I dusted the asparagus with rotenone a week or two after we stopped harvesting to get rid of our nasty asparagus beetle infestation. It worked nicely and the plants showed some nice new fern growth, but the beetles were back last week. After picking them off for a couple days, I wasn't seeming to put a dent in them, so I dusted again. So far so good.
• The garden loved the June weather. There were no heat waves after the nasty one the first week of the month. It seemed to serve to warm up the soil and get everything off to a nice start. The temperature was then about average and the rainfall only slightly above average the rest of the way. Yet the rain came several times a week every week with no dry spells and only one severe storm that I can remember. We had hail the size of peas, but I didn't notice any damage. Up in Wayne County's fruit country and in other CNY apple orchards, the hail was bigger and did some real damage. Anyway, the nice regular rainfalls kept me from having to water and made the plants happy.
  
• We started harvesting peas last week. The Oregon Giant came out first and the Mammoth Melting Sugar was delayed by only a few days. Both are tasty and of similar size, though so far the MMS seems to keep its pods nice and thin for a longer time than the OG.
  
• The peas were not attacked by critters again until we left town for 4th of July weekend. The night before we left I became another happy customer of Havahart's traps, but apparently the dude had friends that were still around. Across the street, Joe has caught 5 woodchucks the last I heard. He knew of two more that were still around. Maybe we're down to one? I hope?
• The tomatoes are growing like gangbusters. In my six years of gardening, these are the best I've seen at this point in the season. I tied them to the stakes for the third time tonight. They are dark green, bushy, and healthy. I love the smell of the plants when I'm in the middle of them.
  
• Volunteer sunflowers are nearly ready to bloom. I might have let a few too many stick around, because they've shaded out some peas, beans and tomatoes, but I think it will be worth it in the end.
• Pole beans behind the tomatoes are climbing nicely and seem to have finally outpaced the sunflowers. The ones behind the herb garden are still way behind because of the woodchuck. That soil is pretty lousy, so their lagging may also have something to do with that.
• Summer squash is nearly here. I had to cut off one fruit that was a dud, but we returned from the weekend to find two zucchini on one plant that are nearly ready to harvest. Cucumber beetles have done a job on that plant but, interestingly, not the other two that are smaller and have no fruit yet.
  
• Peppers are doing much better than last year, but they're taking their time. The first flowers peeked out late last week.
• I harvested a good cup or so of basil leaves off of the five or six plants for pasta salad on the 4th. A few of the plants look great, but the ones in with the tomatoes seem to be struggling for sun. They still look healthy but are trying to grow taller than they seem to be able to. The basil tasted great. I love the flavor before it starts to flower.
  
• The garlic is in trouble. I may have some kind of disease as several plants wilted and left me with crummy bulbs. Now it seems that others are in the process of doing so. If I pull them out now, some of the bulbs are turning kind of brown but others are okay. George had the same thing happen to him for a few years and now he's taking a several-year hiatus from garlic to try to let the disease out of the soil. Has anyone else had similar garlic issues?
  

Lily

6-23-08

Anyone know what kind of lily this is? It's about two feet high and has foliage that's similar to a tiger lily, though smaller of course.

Tiger Lily

Lilium lancifolium
5-23-08

Flower planting

I planted some roots and bulbs yesterday. Two each of Etna Astilbe and Straussenfeder Astilbe went in front of the neighbor's stone wall in the shade.

Six Grand Paradiso Lily bulbs were spread out between the telephone pole garden, the lily garden next to the front doors, and the garden in front of the fence and behind the grill. In the very back of the last garden went two Garden Pleasure Lily Tree bulbs. Still lots more to plant!

Mmmm...cheesecake

Here's the last slice of ricotta cheesecake I made from (mostly) local ingredients. I made the ricotta from Wake Robin Farm milk and added that to eggs from Two Hearts Farm in Morrisville and Organic Valley butter, which may have originated on Cobblestone Valley Farm, where I picked the strawberries we served on top.

I used Mark Bitten's recipe in How to Cook Everything and it worked pretty well. Lessons learned:

-Stir the milk less often while it's heating to result in ricotta that's a little less gritty.

-Get some heavy duty aluminum foil to wrap around the springform pan so the cake can bake in a water bath, resulting in more even baking.

-The orange zest was good, but it was stronger than I expected and distracted from the berries. Just vanilla would be perfect when you want to accentuate fresh local berries.

-Bittman says to double his graham cracker crumb recipe for this cheesecake for some mysterious reason, but it seemed way too much.

I picked another 16 pounds of berries this morning and hope to make one last trip to the farm before the season ends. All the rain we've been getting is starting to result in some overripe and moldy berries, but the picking was great today! I filled up the flat in less than two and a half hours.