Never too early to get pickled

by Ari Levaux

Spring is the season for planting, and fall is for harvesting and preserving. At least, that is the conventional wisdom among those who partake in such pursuits. But these rules-of-thumb can oversimplify the matter and get in the way of living a DIY-food lifestyle to the fullest.

It’s not too late to plant, yet. Nor is it too early to start putting away the harvest.

There is a little-known but important window in the weeks following the summer solstice, during which time a fall garden is planted. This planting usually includes many of the same cool weather crops that were sown in early spring for an early harvest, like spinach, lettuce and radishes. As these original plantings go to seed in the long days, a new wave can now be planted that will sprint through the end of summer and cruise in the cool days of fall. Other short season plants can be sown as well, like broccoli or peas. Some fast-growing herbs, like cilantro, can be sown every two weeks throughout the season.

Depending on your location and the crop in question, you might consider attempting to keep some plants alive through winter by covering them, building cold frames, or both. Spinach, kale and mustard greens are good candidates for a wintergreens patch.

If you didn’t leave much room for a fall garden, find space in the gaps left by the failures of spring, or vacancies created as the season unfolds. Dig up the peas and lettuce patches, harvest the garlic, and replace them with fall plantings.

Sow into well-watered soil, and keep the seeds and sprouts very wet in the days that follow, as they grow into little plants. If you forget to water for a day in the summertime heat, they could fry.

Growing your food is a noble business. But depending on your motives and resources, preserving the harvest might be a more valuable use of your time. Farmers markets are my primary source of food to process, as it’s fresh and local, and my garden isn’t big enough. But you can play Little House on the Prairie with produce from the store, too.

But the big misconception, even among insiders, is that we must wait until harvest season to start making our pickles, preserves and whatnot.

Waiting until fall can be a recipe for stress when the big harvest finally arrives, as the work of dealing with all of that bounty can be overwhelming.

Once you’ve canned salsa, applesauce, pickled peppers and grape juice in a single afternoon, just to create fridge space for the next load of harvest, you’ll appreciate the concept of pacing yourself through the growing season. A little here and there, whenever the opportunities present themselves, will leave you in good shape by summer’s end.

To this end, I’ve been doing small batches of pickles. It’s partly a pantry-filling project, but I’m also doing research ahead of a big cucumber harvest I’m expecting. But the most important reason to pickle cucumbers now, rather than “harvest season,” is so you don’t have to mess with them when it’s time to pickle peppers, or make salsa.

There’s a large population of Belarusians where I live, several of whom have stands at the farmers market. Their tables are essentially DIY kits for Eastern European-style pickles – just add vinegar. Their stands offer little more than cucumbers, dill and sometimes horseradish leaves (for crispier, tastier pickles). The cucumbers are grown in greenhouses as well as outdoors, and from the first day of the farmers market to the last, their tables look the same. With their help, my pantry is filling up.

One of these pickle-loving people even gave me a sample of her finished product. The jar included garlic flowers among the 3-inch cucumbers, dill and horseradish leaves. It also bore a label for an old world eggplant spread called ikra, which it once contained. These were unsealed refrigerator pickles, little more than vegetables and spices placed in a mixture of salt, water and vinegar, and put in the fridge for a few days, without any heat processing.

The pickles had a very basic, boilerplate dill pickle flavor and vanished from the jar almost immediately. I replaced them with inch-thick rounds from a slicing cucumber, and put the jar back in the fridge. About a week later, I ate the pickles again and added cucumber yet again, along with some fresh garlic flowers. Such is the easily maintained, self-perpetuating cycle of fridge pickles. Replenish vinegar, salt, dill and garlic from time to time.

I’ve also put up a few jars of heat-sealed pickles, trying to mimic that simple, Belarusian recipe.

I use grape leaves instead of horseradish leaves, because that’s what I have – either type of leaf will help keep the pickles crispier. I think cider vinegar tastes better than white, despite the fact that it darkens the brine, and thus the pickles.

Until I figure out exactly how I like my dills, here’s a recipe for bread and butter pickles. It’s from Stocking Up, an old-school source for canning recipes.

Bread and Butter Pickles

30 medium cucumbers

10 medium onions

4 tablespoons salt

Slice the cucumbers and onions, sprinkle with salt, and let sit for an hour. Then drain. Meanwhile, make a spiced vinegar with the following:

5 cups vinegar

2 teaspoons celery seed

2 teaspoons ground ginger

1 teaspoon turmeric powder

2 tablespoons mustard seeds

2 cups honey

 Bring the spiced vinegar to a boil. Add cucumbers and onions and bring back to the boil. Simmer 10 minutes. Seal in sterilized jars. Process for 10 minutes in a waterbath at a simmer.