Saturday 26 September 2015

Harvest


We have a very short growing season, so our tomatoes are only now starting to ripen.  The ones pictured above are a tasty variety called Siderno Hybrid, which I grew from seed.  


These three plants were purchased from our local nursery and are prolific producers.  The variety is Tiny Tim.


I didn't have any success with growing cucumbers this year.  They were somewhat neglected and failed to produce any fruit.  I bought these pickling cucumbers at the farmers' market one Saturday.


This is my first attempt at pickling cucumbers and I wanted to make dill pickles.  I searched through my recipe books and found the recipes very complicated and time-consuming.


I then searched online and came up with a simple recipe which only required boiling the salt, vinegar and water and then adding it to the cucumbers, which were packed in jars with the fresh dill.
 
I omitted the garlic and opted not to use pre-packaged pickling spices, as I did not like the aroma once I opened the packet.  It will be interesting to see how they taste in a few weeks' time.
 
PS Since I drafted this post a while ago, the season has changed and I was out picking the remaining tomatoes this afternoon, as we have a frost warning for tonight.

2 comments:

  1. Your tomatoes look lovely. Ours have finished now we took the last green tomatoes off the plants and brought them into the house - they are in the window to catch the sun with a couple of bananas to encourage them to ripen - if they don't we will have to make some chutney with them:)

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  2. Happy Autumn, Marie! What beautiful vegetables! And VERY impressive is your pickling! I've always wanted to do pickles. But like you, I've found so many recipes time consuming--and yielding HUGE quantities. I LOVE pickles of all kinds. One day I'll give them a go! You'll have to give us a pickle report/taste test later! ;o) We didn't to any veg this year. But we did herbs in pots and they did very well. I'm harvesting some new to keep for dried later. This past weekend there was a decided change in the air, and autumn is definitely here. We took a long walk on Sunday--so crisp and lovely with gentle sun... Finally a break in the bucketing rain... LOL! Happy Days, my friend ((LOVE & HUGS))

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