Veggie Pruning and Making Fermented Armenian Cucumber Pickles

Veggie Pruning & Making Fermented Armenian Cucumber Pickles-

It was 103 yesterday, but woke up to 65 degrees this morning, what a relief! It's 12:30 p.m. and only 73 degrees, so much cooler. Dave did a marathon in the heat yesterday. I told him to wait til this morning when it would be cooler, but he was a man on a mission! He did a heavy pruning of the tomatoes vines with no fruit and tied them up more-

Yesterday you couldn't see the soil it was so overgrown!

Cuke vines tied up on the fence now, were all over the ground before 

Ditto our HUGE Italian peppers bending over to the ground, he had to stake them up again. It's always good to cut any non-productive vines out, to let the existing fruit have more sun to ripen, and let more water in. We watered heavily last night and the garden looks so much better! We'll be fertilizing the tomatoes today as well. Fast growers need lots of food...

Last weekend I ran across some small Armenian Cucumbers. I thought they would be great, but wasn't that familiar with them. I googled them and there are tons of recipes out there. I always have trouble finding nice pickling cukes here locally. They're either bad, bruised, slimy or just none to buy. Maybe next year I will grow my own. I bought a bag and today started making some fermented pickles. I combined the two recipes below to see how they would come out. I put in small, fresh dill since I couldn't find any heads to buy locally. It smells great, so it should work well for the pickles and I've used that before instead of the heads. For some reason dill is something I can never grow here and I have no idea why, must be the soil? So I basically added a small package of organic fresh dill, 3 large cloves fresh garlic, 1 tablespoon of black peppercorns, 1 teaspoon of celery seed, 1 teaspoon of mustard seed, and 1 black tea bag in the bottom (for tannins/crunch)-

The rest is just 2 sliced up yellow Gypsy peppers from the garden, and the sea salt and water-

I was disappointed when I opened up the bag of cucumbers that they were getting a little slimy so I scrubbed them really well and cut off any bad spots. It was my own fault that I didn't process them last weekend since I forgot to buy the dill! I'm sure they'll be fine and fermented pickles tend to be a little softer anyway. My fermenting jar with weights works great on anything with the water lock-

I have used this fermenting jars for several years and LOVE IT! It's a half gallon w/ceramic weights-

                                                           

A water lock lets the gasses escape but keeps the bad bacteria out. I put the crock on my kitchen counter, covered, and will keep an eye on them-

Soon to be pickles!!!

I wanted to add- this is so much FASTER than canning (unless you eat gallons per year) AND you get the healthy probiotics. Once you get the flavor you want, you just put them in a jar and refrigerate, they'll keep a long time. Recipes here and you can certainly modify as needed. The salt/water ratio is KEY. Phickle.com and Fermented Pickles w/Tea