Tennessee 2022 Garden

[Gary350]

No rain & 92° soil was very dry. It is good that I watered the garden at 6 pm yesterday rain storms were 90 miles north of us 10 pm last night. 4 am we had a lightning storm with just enough rain to make things surface wet. 6 pm yesterday I filled 4 buckets with 5 gallons of water per bucket 6 times so I could give onion bed a measured amount of water, the onion bed soaked up 120 gallons of water and it still looks dry. I watered all the 2" tall plants that are still struggling to grow larger. I watered 3 rows of potatoes 5 times to make sure it soaked in. Garden row #15 potato plants look like they are dying.

[Gary350]

Garden looks very good this morning, it rained again last night everything looks wet, rain gauge shows only 1/8" of rain. It seems a small rain, cooler temperatures, and dark cloudy over cast sky is very good, it was only 84° yesterday and forecast for tonight 58°F. Pepper seeds in 6 locations finally germinated. Potato plants in 2 rows appear to be dying for sure this time I can hardly wait to dig them up to see what is there, I hope tiny new potatoes will be seed potatoes in July. Several pepper plants have large peppers very soon we will pick some. I put up the spinners again.

[Gary350]

Yesterday evening 6/3/2022 garlic leaves are turning yellow & very brown so I dug around in the soil, there are lots of big garlic in there. A month ago garlic was much smaller I was not expecting to harvest garlic this soon. I planted 95 garlic about Sept and harvested 82 garlic. There are a dozen very large garlic and several garlic smaller than a ping pong ball. 2 rotten garlic bulbs. 2 garlic bulbs are a pile of cloves. I'm not sure why the variety of sizes in the same bed. South side appears to be the largest garlic where the sun is. East & west sides have large garlic too. Center is where most of the smaller garlic grew. But that is not 100% true there were small garlic in between larger garlics. I planted a lot of random size grocery store hard neck garlic cloves. This year I forgot to keep garlic bulbs in the refrigerator 2 month before planting cloves they were slow to grow tops about 2 weeks, refrigerator makes cloves grow tops in about 5 days. Planting garlic 8 weeks before first frost turned out good. I need a drying table that stays dry garlic needs to dry for a month.

[Gary350]

I built a garlic drying stand today so garlic can dry for a month.

[Gary350]

Yesterday I dug up 2 rows of potatoes, each row was 25 feet long. Compose material goes away very quick leaving soil very hard no wonder potatoes never grow very large. I had to water the soil over & over for several hours to make potato rows easier to dig up. I am spending more time studying what I see when I dig up potatoes, soil needs to be soft & stay soft. There was 37½ lbs of potatoes in 50 feet = 19 lbs of Russet potatoes & 18½ lbs of Kennebec potatoes. Potatoes dried on the yard table over night, this morning I weighed and boxed potatoes. It was 56° this morning. Picture shows Kennebec potatoes on the left they have a light brown skin. Russets on the right have a darker brown skin. Kennebec taste much better than Russet. There is probably 1 lb of marble size potatoes in the bottom of each box & 2 lbs of ping pong ball size potatoes in each box & 6 lbs of golf ball potatoes in the box. Small potatoes are good for soup & seed potatoes.

I found another neighbor with a garden he said, If potatoes don't get enough water they will not blossom, if plants don't blossom plants only produce a few small potatoes. Plants blossom in about 2 months.

[imafan26]

I just noticed. You said you water the garden with buckets? Is it always hand watered or do you have some kind of irrigation? Or, do you depend mostly on rain?

[Gary350]

I just noticed. You said you water the garden with buckets? Is it always hand watered or do you have some kind of irrigation? Or, do you depend mostly on rain?

I wanted to put 100 gallons of water on the onions but only way to measure water is with 5 gallon buckets.

Now I did an experiment, it takes 58 seconds for the hose to fill a bucket with 5 gallons of water. Next time onions need 100 gallons of water I will use water hose for 20 minutes.

The last 25 foot potato row needs 20 gallons of water 4 minutes with the water hose will work. Garden neighbor said, if potato plants don't get enough water plants don't blossom, no blossoms plants only grow a few small potatoes. Plants blossom in about 2 months.

[Gary350]

I'm not watering anything in the garden except, onions, potatoes, and tiny plants from germinated seeds, larger plants find plenty of water. Yesterday evening I watered cucumbers about 1 minute, just enough water to make soft soil this morning, I pull weeds & grass this morning in the cucumber row. Pull soil up a hand full each time toss it to the center of the row for weeds to die. If I miss a tiny weed no problem weeds are good to make themself known they get larger easy to see. It took 10 minutes to weed cucumbers & 10 minutes to tie up tomatoes & peppers. I'm finished until 7 pm onions & potatoes need a 10 minutes of water.

Red onions sure are good but nothing large enough to eat now so next time try a yellow-brown onion several are 3" diameter.

[Gary350]

Tomatoes are growing much faster than I expected 56° every morning & only 80° during the day is much better than 90° we usually have in June. Tomatoes have doubled in size in 3 days. I only planted 6 plants this year. It appears we might have 15 ripe tomatoes in a week or so.

[Gary350]

Today I pulled up a Brown-Yellow onion to make potato salad. Onion is 2½" diameter grown from a set. I have grown these from sets before but they never grew larger than 2" before. I sliced & diced it, it is hard on the eyes but nothing like the tear gas blinding red onions. Arizona they called these brown onions because the outside skin is brown, remove the brown skin they have yellow skin. TN grocery store call them yellow onions because of the yellow skin. These onions are very good. Red onions have the best flavor but they cause us to have heart burn so we decided not to eat them today. Maybe red onions would be best cooked in soup or stew. 21-0-0 fertilizer caused onions to have high sulfur.

Longest day of the summer is 2 weeks away I don't think onions will finish the bulbing stage for 4 more weeks. Plants are tall & top heavy several tops have fallen over. There are several small onions among the larger onions. I need to keep close watch to see what happens especially with 5 days of flash flood rain in the forecast onions might get too wet an rot. Last year small onions 8 to 9 equaled 1 larger grocery store onion. We may have too many onions this year onions never grew this large before. We have not been eating Candy onions they don't have much onion flavor but I think a big triple thick slice will be good on a sandwich.

[Gary350]

This morning I pulled up the only 2 carrots that grew. 1 carrots is a normal carrot the other carrot is 3 carrots grown together. I planted, carrots, onions, potatoes in a 10" deep potting soil bed for an experiment. I had notes but when no carrots grew I threw notes away. All I know is these are 1/2 long carrots.

Last night I watched a video, a women sprouted carrots seeds inside the house JUNE in 2 days then planted seeds in the garden. I did not know carrots are a 65 day crop. This woman lives a few miles from Canada USA border.

About 25 years ago I grew a good crop of 200 carrots in construction sand but I don't remember when I planted seeds or when I harvested carrots??? All I remember is watering seeds several times every day for several weeks & lots of water every day after seeds germinated to keep tiny plants alive.

Two 5" long carrots for dinner tomorrow.

[Gary350]

I pulled up a Candy onion for dinner 1 lb 5.9 ounces. Very good flavor onion.

[pepperhead212]

That's one big onion!

[imafan26]

Wow! I am so jealous.

[Gary350]

Today before 100° weather arrives I need to do a few things in the garden. A dozen cucumber plants need help finding something to grow on, plants are so easy to break if I move them too far. I helped a dozen cucumber plants find the tomato cages, 2 plants broke off. I crawled through the corn pulling weeds & tillers. Tillers are a weird name for suckers. I weeded peppers & tomatoes. Onion tops are falling over online videos say that means onions are at the bulb growing stage & other videos claim its time to pull up the onions but commercial onion growers leave onions in the field another month until tops are totally dead & dried up then a potato digging machines digs up the onions. I think location & weather determines what to do next. If onions look like they are rotting in the soil they need to be pulled up. There are a lot of peppers on the pepper plants, sweet peppers will not like 100° weather.

[Gary350]

I picked 1 Carman pepper yesterday and 3 more today. Plants are loaded I left the rest on the plants for now to see if they grow larger. Online information says, the sooner you pick the sooner plants grow more. I want peppers to all grow 7" long. I have learned it takes 4 weeks to turn RED color on the plant but only 2 weeks to turn Red in the kitchen. Wife wants Red peppers. Sweet flavor is very good much better than sweet bell peppers without the bell pepper taste. Biggest advantage is Carman plants are making lots of peppers now in this hot dry weather, sweet bells won't make a harvest until Oct bell plants will load up with 45 ripe bell pepper all at once. Carman will make peppers all summer.

[Gary350]

I can't stop Pac Choy from bolting, I pick off seed tops every day they grow back every day. Pac Choy did not bolt last summer but last year I was growing different seeds. Pac Choy plants look the same as last years plants but DNA much be different. Leaves are not bitter in hot weather they taste better than lettuce.

[Gary350]

This morning I dug up the dead cilantro plant. I cut off a root & stem and chewed on them, they taste mostly like dead sticks. Maybe green plants will still have flavor. I only want the seeds, I know green seeds taste like cilantro but dry seeds taste like nothing. I put dead cilantro plant in a 30 gallon trash can to collect seeds after seeds dry several more days.

[Gary350]

Early this morning I searched the onion bed for onions with dry dead tops & onions with no tops. These onions need to be pulled up so they don't rot. I have a good variety of, Candy onions, Vidalia onions, Red onions, all sizes from golf ball size to 4" diameter, about 35 onions. Peal, cut, slice, about 1 gallon of sliced onions. Wife put most of the onions in 2 freezer bags & put some in the crock pot for what ever she is cooking today. I could have put these onions in the kitchen pantry but we already have 14 big slicer onions there.

Most of the Red onions have not grown larger than ping pong balls or golf balls and I don't think they will grown from SETs. Red onions are very quick to rot if they get too much rain. 6 to 8 small onions are equal to a good size slicing onion they have the best flavor for cooking.

[applestar]

Cilantro seeds dried and ground is the spice coriander— essential ingredient for good chili recipe. You can grind with coffee grinder or pepper grinder.

Have you tried the boc choi flower buds and just starting to open flowers sautéed in olive oil or butter like broccoli rabe?

[Gary350]

This morning I decided to dig into the onion potato bed to see what is in there. This bed was for carrots that never grew. About 4 months ago grocery store russet potatoes in the pantry were growing so I cut off several eyes to plant in the bed. It appears 7 of the potato peals grew plants and today I harvested 2 lbs 9 ounces of new potatoes. Very soft potting soil in this bed is 8" deep. Potatoes from this crop appears to be slightly larger than potatoes grown in garden soil. Potato skins are ruff as 40 grit sand paper. This is only 5.8 ounces of new potatoes per plant not very good crop but an ok crop from 7 potato peals. This is not a good crop of potatoes compared to what some people get, I watched a YouTube video last night a man that lives near Canada that has very good looking soft black soil gets 10 lbs of new potatoes per plant. I wonder what 10 lbs per plant really means he might be planting large potatoes with 10 eyes. I have a new idea next year I use shade cloth to keep potato plants from getting hot from the sun OR maybe plant potatoes on the east side of a shade tree so potato plants get full shade from 12 noon to dark.

I accidently found candy onion plants at the garden store after I had finished planting onions sets so I bought plant and planted them any place I could find. Onion plants are many times better than onion sets. I wish I could count on the garden store having onion plants next year, I would only need to buy about 125 plants, not 400 sets.

Garden soil is so dry small plants with small roots are about to die so I did AZ irrigation on several small plants. Plants look better already. North end of pac choy row has very small plants they had to be replanted from seeds. 2 cantaloup plants almost died now they look better. 4 watermelon plants look better too. Once these plants grow deeper roots they should be ok I hope, our worse weather is already here, no rain hot and dry as AZ desert already, its not usually this hot & dry until July.

[Gary350]

I returned to the garden to see if I can find something to do before it is 98° and I find a potato plant hiding under the Chard plant. There is also a small poke berry plant there. Soil is cracked open that is a good indication there are new potatoes in the soil. I see 5 plants so this must be 1 seed potato with 5 eyes or 5 cuttings or 5 potato pealing eyes. I dug up 12 ounces of new potatoes. This is interesting it makes me remember how I use to grow my very best crop of new potatoes in a stack of car tires when I first moved to TN 43 years ago planted about June. I was able to duplicate this several times, I always had a very good crop of new potatoes in car tires. Put 1 tire in the garden, put 15 potato cuttings inside the tire on soil surface, cover potato eyes with 1" soil, fertilize with 15-15-15 fertilizer. I don't remember how many eyes each seed potato cutting had? When plants were about 4" above the tire put 1 more tire on the stack. Once a week I poured a 5 gallon bucket of water inside the tires. When plants are 4" above the 2nd tire put 1 more tire on the stack. Plants grow up about 20" above the 3rd tire. Pour 5 gallons of water inside the tires every week and some fertilizer too. NO soil needs to be added to cover up and prevent new potatoes from turning green from the sun, tires are full shade for new potatoes, green plants were about 3½ ft tall no sunlight can reach the new potatoes. 20 lbs of new potatoes grow on the soil surface in total darkness. Puzzle pieces are starting to come together. I trashed those tires they made me black as a coal miner.

17.8 + 2.9 + .12 = 50 lbs 13 oz., total new potatoes so far.

I have a swarm of white butterflies only on the cucumber plants. I hope plants don't get destroyed by bugs before cucumbers grow.

[applestar]

Someday when I can grow extra potatoes, I want to try some preserving methods like pressure canning and dehydrating to make “instant” mashed potato flakes (I watched some videos a while ago — I think you basically mash them then spread in thin layer to put in dehydrator)

What are you doing with your bounty?

[Gary350]

Someday when I can grow extra potatoes, I want to try some preserving methods like pressure canning and dehydrating to make “instant” mashed potato flakes (I watched some videos a while ago — I think you basically mash them then spread in thin layer to put in dehydrator)

What are you doing with your bounty?

Keep potatoes, dark, cool, dry. I keep potatoes inside the house in AC about 73°F all summer. Shallow boxes work best so I can do a quick inspection once a week and not have to stir potatoes around & around looking for bad potatoes. Keep potatoes in a dark place, a window 8 feet away with blinds closed makes potatoes start turning green in 1 month. Boxes need air circulation potatoes dehydrate and get wet then rot if boxes have too may potatoes or no good air circulation. I save, amazon delivery boxes, Walmart boxes, pizza boxes, and get free post office boxes. I cut boxes down like 2" tall trays. Potatoes in tray shapes are quick & easy inspection once a week. I never wash potatoes that we plan to keep 8 months to eat. If I want seed potatoes I wash the potatoes to remove enzymes that prevent sprouting. If I see a potato eye growing in a box I plant it in the garden in any available location March to Sept. Save green potatoes for seed potatoes or cut green off and eat them. In cold weather I move potatoes outside to the shed where it is cold but does not freeze. I kept water bottles in the shed last winter to see if they would freeze it seldom got below 38°, and 12° weather several times shed never got below 34° potatoes were good all winter. A cellar would be nice but it would be a swimming pool in TN. Our kitchen pantry has a white color plastic basket with holes. Marble size potatoes need to be eaten soon as you can in, soup, stew, potato salad, before they dry up like raisins.

[applestar]

@Gary350 - Thank you for the detailed reply!

[Gary350]

Lots of peppers on the plants but no sweet bells yet, probably won't be sweet peppers until Oct. Lots of large Carman peppers. Jalapeno peppers are full size but not ready to pick until peppers are full of cracks. Poblano peppers too small to pick. Corn is 4½ ft tall. 3 rows of beans have blossomed but no beans yet. Cucumbers were loaded with a 100 or more yellow blossoms. Several onion tops have fallen over but that is not a bad thing. Tomato plants are loaded with large green tomatoes. Zinnia flowers look nice. Some of the larger melon plants are starting to grow, the small plants just set there. Lemon grass is getting larger. Thai basil is a good looking plant I have been eating it is salad. Tarragon dies every year not sure what this plant needs. Several plants in the last potato row have died, some are dying, some are not dying, they were all planted the same day, there is no hurry to dig up more potatoes. Blackberries are slow getting ripe this year. No apples or peaches on the trees. Choke cherry seeds never grew. I am getting a lot of good leaves from the pac choy plants they keep trying to blossom and grow seeds. Fennel looks good I have been eating tops in salad. I know melons love hot weather but they don't like it this dry.

[Gary350]

The last row of potato plants finally died so I dug up 10 lbs 4 ounces of Kennebec new potatoes. This makes a total of 61 lbs.

These potatoes are larger than most potatoes grow. I planted this row under a shade tree hoping it will help them in hot weather like it does tomatoes in our hot weather. I also mulched this row maybe that helped too. I noticed 97% of the new potatoes grew near the soil surface maybe that is because I never covered seed potatoes with much soil.

[Gary350]

Today I trimmed away dry garlic tops & dry roots then put garlic bulbs in the kitchen pantry. 8 lbs 12 ounces of hard neck garlic grown from Walmart hard neck garlic.

I need the drying table for onions.

[Gary350]

Growing onions in soft potting soil seems to be a disadvantage over growing onions in garden soil. Potting soil is always dryer than garden soil and water a few times every week does not seem to help. Garden soil has more nutrients than potting soil and fertilizer does not seem to help onions grow larger in potting soil. Photo shows onions of left side were grown in potting soil & onions on the right side were grown in garden soil with 2" of mulch on soil surface. Onions grown in real garden soil are 2 to 3 times larger than onions grown in potting soil. Both crops left & right were grown from the same Candy Onion plants, not sets. It appears that good soil nutrients, continuous soil moisture, full sun all day, are most important things to grow large onions.

[Gary350]

Today I pulled up all the candy onions I could find with dry dead top. I also pulled up all the red onions with dry dead tops. I left the onions on the yard table all day skins dries up and curled up skins were easy to remove. I trimmed off roots & tops there are 49 candy onions & 14 red onions ready for the kitchen pantry.

Bug of the day, not sure what this bug is or what is does?

[applestar]

Gary350 That’s a Harlequin bug — a stinkbug that specializes in attacking cabbage family crops

Look for clusters of black and white barrel shaped eggs under leaves.

harlequin bug - Murgantia histrionica (Hahn)
https://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/ve ... in_bug.htm

The harlequin bug is an important insect pest of cabbage and related crops in the southern half of the United States. This pest has the ability to destroy the entire crop where it is not controlled.

[Gary350]

Garden soil is dry as desert, 98° feels like 106°. No rain in weeks, TV this morning said, drought burn ban, no fires allowed, no fireworks allowed, no rain in forecast for another week. I go outside for 10 minutes then come inside for 1 hour & drink lots of ice water. Flies are biting worse than mosquitos. Grass crunches when walked on.

Today I found 2 tiny cucumbers starting to grow. I need to be watering cucumbers every day maybe we will have cucumbers big enough to slice in a week. Plant leaves hang down like wet rags in hot sun. I found a different bug on cucumbers but can't find eggs on under side of leaves. Birds are spending a lot of time in the cucumbers.

Today I found the first ripe Cumberland Black Raspberry. In the past we always have first berries about June 15, today is June 21, maybe no rain & 98° is the problem. Its not usually this hot for another 2 weeks.

Today is the longest day of the year, tomorrow days get shorter.

[Gary350]

This morning I see a lot of onion tops laying on there side drying up so I pulled up 51 candy onions grown from plants in the potting soil bed. Most of these onions seem to be larger than onions grown in the garden soil bed. Onion plants had only grown to golf ball size before I gave them fertilizer & started watering them 3 times a week then suddenly they grow several times larger in 1 month. I trimmed the roots & tops then left them on the table to dry in 91° shade. Now they are boxed to stay outside a few days unless it rains.

I found 1 cucumber 2" long on 1 plant today. Plants are off to a slow start, I hope I get more than 1 cucumber per day I want a bushel basket full every day for 2 days maybe 3 days.

Zinnias in garden look nice it has been a very long times sense I grew Zinnias.

[Gary350]

53 Vidalia onions today. It has not rained in a very long time I decided to water red onions now some are growing larger. There are still several of each variety of onion to pull up. I have been putting all the onion scraps in buckets of water there must be sugar in onions natural yeast in the air has made onion water foal and bubble like wine. I am putting other things in the buckets too, weeds, trimmed tomato plant leaves, and anything else I have. Onion row is almost gone. There might be 50 more onions to harvest.

Cantaloupe plants have 5 melons, no melons on watermelon plants.

Tomatoes are finally starting to get ripe. Pepper plants are loaded. 1 pepper plant died moles tunneled under the plant probably cut off the main root. Oh well I have too many peppers & plants anyway I had to buy 4 plants to a tray, no big deal $2.47 per 4 pack.

Cucumber plants have several small Q-cumbers there is no way 80 plants will make more that 10 to 12 ripe cucumbers every day at this rate. This will be very slow making 7 gallons of pickles it might take several weeks unless plants speed up and grow more cucumbers per day. I planted 3 different kinds of cucumbers it already appears National is producing the most cucumbers, Wisconsin 58 is very slow producer. Wait & see what happens I will soon learn what variety not to grow.

Dry weather we have snake bite warning on TV, copper head & rattle snakes.

[applestar]

Fantastic harvest!

What will you do to preserve all those onions? Remember that sweet onions have shorter shelf life.

FYI — Vidalia has its own webpage —

Storage & Handling | Vidalia® Onions
https://www.vidaliaonion.org/resources/ ... -handling/

When stored properly, our Vidalias can last as long as 1-2 months on the counter, or 3-6 months when placed into refrigerator veggie bin (mentioned below).

[Gary350]

Fantastic harvest!

What will you do to preserve all those onions? Remember that sweet onions have shorter shelf life.

FYI — Vidalia has its own webpage —

Storage & Handling | Vidalia® Onions
https://www.vidaliaonion.org/resources/ ... -handling/

When stored properly, our Vidalias can last as long as 1-2 months on the counter, or 3-6 months when placed into refrigerator veggie bin (mentioned below).

Last year we had very good luck keeping onions 3 to 4 month in the kitchen panty. House AC is 73°F humidity is low. Old timers know things that worked, they didn't know why they worked, my grandmother use to rotate onions about every few days she said, if onions lay there on the same side too long they rot on the bottom side. We rotate onions every time we need 1 to cook with. We have onion is shallow cardboard box trays same as potatoes. I need to make more cardboard trays we have 2 times more onions then we ever had. We cook with onions every day, my 2 sons will want onions soon as we start having ripe tomatoes for, chili, sandwiches, Mexicans food, oriental food, salsa. I planted about 400 onions and got about 200 good large diameter slicer onions. Onions plants grew much better than onion sets. I usually plan ahead for the worse with 400 sets but next year 200 plants should give us 100 big slicer onions IF the garden store sells candy onion plants again.

[Gary350]

My Blackberry plants are actually Wild Cumberland Black Raspberry plants native to south east part of USA. I think hot dry weather with no rain for a months is why plants are late to produce berries this year. I'm not very excited about blackberries this year plants have been producing 2 or 3 berries every say for a week, I have been letting birds & deer eat them. Garden friend & his wife up the road are coming to pick berries soon as plants start producing something worth picking. I picked about 1/2 cup of berries this morning.

[Gary350]

It took me 4 or 5 days to finally pick 9 lbs 8 ounces of cucumbers. National cucumbers are growing all the cucumbers. Gherkin only grew 1 cucumber. Wisconsin has grown 0 cucumbers & several plants died. Fresh picked cucumbers slice easy, 5 day old cucumbers are harder to slice skin gets tough.

2 weeks ago I found a 100 year old slicer at a yard sale, owner wants big money for it, if its old its gold. I spent about 1 minute looking a the slicer then went home and built a slicer in about 1 hour using my vintage corrugated slicer. Blade adjusts up/down for any thickness.

Bread & Butter Pickle Recipe
8 lbs of sliced cucumber to make 4 quart jars of pickles. 10 lbs is best for full jars.

Brine recipe.
1 quart white vinegar 5%
1 quart white sugar
1 quart water
4 tsp celery seeds
4 tsp mustard seeds
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp cinnamon
1 medium onion sliced

Cut cucumber ends off. Slice 10 lbs of cucumbers then put them in a large pan, pour 2 cups of canning salt over the cucumbers stir well then top with 2 quarts of ice cubes then stir well. Stir cucumber slices every 1 hour for 4 hours.

Put brine in a large pot on the stove turn stove on high 30 minutes before cucumbers are finished.

4 hours later drain away the salt water from cucumber slices, fill pan with fresh water stir well then drain away the water. Fill pan 1 more time with water stir well then drain away the water. Drain well.

Pour sliced cucumber into the boiling brine stir well. Keep lid on top so it returned to a boil sooner about 10 minutes. Soon as brine & cucumbers return to boil remove from stove.

Remove cucumbers from brine to fill 4 quart jars. Fill all 4 jars with hot brine 1/4" from top. Remove air in jars by poking a knife into the jars to stir pickles or shake jars to remove air. Top off jars with more brine 1/4" from top. Clear jar rims put on seals & rings hand tight. Turn jars upside down until they cool about 4 hours. Rinse jars & date lids. If I do this 6 more times I won't need to grow cucumbers for 3 more years.

Maybe this should be in recipe section?

I will probably have to want 5 more days to get another 10 lbs of cucumbers. Wait & see. Pickle making is so quick & easy it took 10 minutes to slice cucumbers. 4 hours to soak in ice & salt, 5 minutes to rinse slices in tap water, 6 minutes to fill 4 quart fill jars with slices, 3 minutes to fill jars with brine, 2 minutes to clean jar rim & screw on rings & seals. If I did not have to wait 4 hours I could make 4 quarts of pickles in about 40 minutes.

[imafan26]

Nice pickles and a great harvest considering it has been hotter there than here.

This is the time of year to harvest onion and garlic. Do you have a pickled sweet onion recipe? I don't want it sweet. I use sweet onions because they are less bitter, but the onions are usually pickled with hot peppers. I have one recipe. I used the wrong peppers so, it wasn't hot.

[Gary350]

Bug of the day. This is the first time I every saw 1 of these bugs, I saw several yesterday & more today?

imafan26, Do you have a pickled sweet onion recipe? I don't want it sweet. I use sweet onions because they are less bitter, but the onions are usually pickled with hot peppers.

Most pickle recipes use white 5% vinegar. Most recipes add salt to mellow out the vinegar flavor. Mexican recipes add lots of salt. Sicily recipes add lots of salt to make good pizza sauce & good spaghetti sauce + small amounts of sugar to taste. I use to pickle mixed vegetables, carrots, onions, broccoli, peppers, beans, corn, cabbage, I used the Bread & Butter recipe with 95% less sugar. Last year I made fermented hot peppers & tomatoes, it ferments for 3 weeks then puree & add, salt, sugar, and enough white vinegar to be a total of 2½% for the whole recipe. 2½% vinegar is the preservative vegetables never needs to be in the refrigerator. Mix by taste when you find something you like make notes.