Dirty Business: Cucumber Harvest and a Snake

As I mentioned before, it’s important to harvest certain vegetables like zucchini or cucumbers early to spur the plants to produce more.  Well, I spotted a few cucumbers that were ready to pull, which are in the header photo.

The two in the middle are the “ideal” size for this particular variety of pickling cucumber, and therefore a little too large for a first harvest, but the other four were just right at this point.  The plants themselves have finally started to grab the trestle that we have on the deck.  In order to get them there, Mrs. Butcher ties the vines to the deck fence until they’re tall enough to reach the trestle:

By the end of the season, that trestle will be completely covered.  Finding the cucumbers is a real exercise in hide and go seek.  It’s amazing how hard it is to find them, even when I’m turning leaves and vines this way and that.  Every year I seem to miss a few that wind up getting too big to be edible.

Anyway, for this first—and very small—harvest, it’s best to go with preserving them as refrigerator pickles, rather than as hot canned pickles.  For those of you saying “huh?” right now, basically the difference is that refrigerator pickles are packed cold, where as hot canned pickles are run through a boiling water process to kill all the microbes that are out to get you.  There are a ton of resources out there but this is a decent primer:

https://www.theyummylife.com/canning_tips

When my harvest starts really kicking into high gear then I’ll start hot canning them, but in the meantime—and while there is room in the fridge—I’ll go with the cold packing method.  It’s very simple and goes like this:

Cut the cucumbers, either halved or into spears.

In a pot, mix together enough water and vinegar to cover the cucumbers in the jars.  For this first batch, I made two jars (although, really, it would probably have been a jar and a half if I had decided to pack them together more), so I used a quart of water and a pint of apple cider vinegar for a 2:1 ratio.  I also added kosher salt in an amount relative to the amount of cups vinegar.  In this case, a pint of vinegar is 2 cups, so I used 2 tablespoons of kosher salt.  If I had used 5 cups of vinegar, I would have added 5 tablespoons of salt.  There is pickling salt available, but it’s very similar to kosher salt in that it is very fine and dissolves easily.  Kosher salt is also typically cheaper than pickling salt.  Heat the water/vinegar/salt mixture over medium high heat, stirring occasionally, until the salt has dissolved.  Turn off the heat and set aside.

In the meantime, wash the jars, lids and any utensils being used in hot, soapy, water.  Yes, these are staying in the refrigerator, but this is always good food safety practice for any type of preserving.

Add fresh dill sprigs, whole (or halved) garlic, whole mustard seeds, whole peppercorns, whole celery seed, a pinch of red pepper flakes, and a little calcium chloride to maintain crispness—1/4 tsp per quart.  You can find calcium chloride in any canning section of the grocery store—usually advertised as “pickle crisp” or something of that nature.  Then add the cucumbers to the jars and pack together tightly—tighter than what is shown here.

Pour in enough brine to cover the cucumbers while still leaving a ½” gap between the top of the liquid and the rim of the jar.  Screw the lids on tightly and place jars in the refrigerator.  Force yourself to leave them alone for at least a week for everything to marinate properly.

Lots of recipes will state that these are only good for about a month or so, but I am here to tell you that I’ve had refrigerator pickles which have lasted for 4-5 months without any degradation in quality.

I should have waited two days before making these because the cucumbers which were only a couple of inches long were ready for harvest soon afterward.

Finally, I managed to get a somewhat decent picture of the garter snake which has been living in our garden for the past several years.

This one is roughly three feet long, as best as I can tell.  I also noticed that we have two of them now.  One day I spotted this one sunning itself on a stone and when it scooted away, there was a 2^nd, smaller, one just underneath which also took off.  These are good creatures to have in the garden because they will eliminate pests such as small rodents, grubs and insects.  They will also eat earthworms, but on balance I’d rather have a garter snake than not.  Assuming that I now have a mating pair here, it’s likely there will be a slew of them by this time next year, but I’m betting most of the offspring (those that survive anyway) will move on to other places so they aren’t all competing for the same food source.