Our garden did pretty good this year. We had, lettuce, onions, zucchini, cucumber, beets, sugar snap peas, spinach, green beans, tomatoes and carrots. The onions all died randomly (and for seemingly no reason?), and only 25 of the 250 carrot seeds I planted actually germinated... But we had a huge yield of peas that Scarlett and Lacey enjoyed. And the lettuce has been flourishing in huge bushels!
And now, it's time for pickling. I just LOVE pickling. I love harvesting, I love prepping, I love arranging the jars, and I love treating them. I love hearing that satisfying pop when the jars seal. I love cracking them open to see what kind of flavour we managed to get.
Given our crappy carrot harvest, I've been forced to pickle some grocery store carrots. Which is a bit disappointing, but still delicious. My real pride and joy this year are our green beans. Last year, I bought the wrong kind of green bean seed. They made very small plants, and only yielded a small amount of beans. This year, I planted a pole-bean, and the vines have crept up our deck railing, and are full of beany deliciousness!
We also had a LOT of beets. Some of you may recall that I'm not really a fan of beets. I find their flavour to be too strong.. And their flavour, which I can only imagine is what sewage tastes like, does not sit well on my palate. But as a testament to my love and devotion, I pickled multiple jars of beets for Tom. And let me tell you, pickling beets is an involved process. You have to boil them and cook them, which takes almost an hour. Then you have to peel and cut them (while beet juice leaks all over your kitchen), and then the pickling solution is much more complicated than carrots and pickles. There's pickling salt, and bay leaves... The whole process leaves your house reeking like boiled beets.
Finally... This year we had enough cucumbers to make two small jars of pickles. And look!!! They look like real pickles, that you'd buy from a store! Things I didn't know about cucumbers--those suckers are HELLA spikey! They have wicked spines all over them.
All in all, this endeavor took more time than I'd care to admit. But I loved every minute of it (except for the residual beet reek). Every year, I think about how the girls will be bigger, and more able to help with the garden in 2020. You can bet you'll find out about it here.
