Discussion: had to look that one up

:) Disappointing. I was hoping they'd be gummy bears or something.

Ha ha! That would have been a much better thing to find! How's the garden? Rob just tried to destroy my peppers whilst trying to string up my mega tomato plants, but both have plenty of unripe fruit on now! Finished the carrots, beets still growing veeeeery slowly, and the squashes might actually be too big for the boxes, despite me trying to trail them up the netting at the back. A bit of powdery mildew on them, but Neem seems to be controlling it okay.

Pepper plants are such wimps. So easy to break off. Like onions - just look at them funny and they snap off. I bought 4 more small cages for my peppers last week. They're *finally* flowering and I have a couple of small fruits set. Way behind though. My boss has already harvested red ones (RED ones!) before either of us have any ripe tomatoes.

Glad to hear you've got the diseases in check. My toms are still struggling with blight, but its not so bad. They are all quite tall now - 6 feet, with a moderate amount of green fruit and still flowering. I've been thinning the lower leaves and treating with neem, but the blight is always there, lurking. The spuds on the other hand came back with a vengeance, flowering, overflowing the containers, and I haven't hit them with neem since the first round failure in early summer. They look great. Even hilled them up with more compost in early July. The butternuts are taking over the fence. Finally some female flowers and one medium fruit has set.

Yes, the beets have slowed down considerably. I did one round of pickling and made 5 pints with some shallots thrown in. Also raspberry-rhubarb jam. Now I'm absolutely drowning in cucumbers and preparing to make relish. I even brought a couple of big ones in to work today to give away but everyone else is drowning in their own cukes - no takers yet. I'm planning to pull most of the remaining beets this weekend, and all the carrots too. Had a few of those but they're still on the small side and not so sweet. Steaming helped alot though. I want to get them all up so I can plant a fall round in that bed. Considering a fall crop of broccoli too. Didn't you have some broccoli in this spring? I've never tried it.

My broccoli grew too slowly at the start and one day during the heatwave, a head started to grow, and the next day, it had bolted. I yanked them to give more space for the squashes. Might try a replant though in a couple of weeks.

Can I have your cucumber relish recipe? I'm also drowning in them, but from the CSA, not the garden. Just started on last week's, and got another 8 yesterday!

I'm going to try the recipe from the Blue Book. Its online here - "Donna Matthews" is claiming it, but I compared it to the one in the Blue Book and they're the same, word for word. The comments seem to indicate there is too much liquid. I think I'm going to double the recipe but use 3c vinegar and 4c sugar. Blue Book warns about changing the ratios when preserving, but I think its just a matter of having leftover juice volume here. This will be my first try at relish. I finally found the celery seeds yesterday. The Indian grocery near campus didn't even have them, but they are great for every other spice - sooo much better (and cheaper) than the grocery store spices. I've been using "pickling salt" rather than kosher. Oh, here's another version of the same recipe with pictures.

Do you happen to have a favorite recipe for just making dill (not sweet) pickles? I want to give it a try next week.

You might check with Ed and Alex for a recipe. Here's the Blue Book dill pickle recipe. Use 1-2 tsp of dill seed per jar instead of fresh if you don't have it. Most grocery stores will have packets of the "pickling spices."

We actually haven't experimented much yet with not sweet pickles, not sure why. I guess we just liked the sweet version. Maybe the next pickling batch we do should be dill pickles!