Sharing the Fruits of Your Garden

David Trammel's picture

I tend to plant to many plants in my garden, which means I almost always end up with too much produce. My cucumbers have been high producers this year. You can only eat so many fresh cucumbers in a salad. I do want to try making pickels soon.

Has anyone tried steamed cucumber?

I stopped at a high end grocery store and bought among things a few items from their deli. One was a garden vegetable medley, oven roasted with spices. It had zucchini and squash, very good. Made me wonder how steamed cucumber (also a squashie) with spices would taste. I'll let you know this Sunday.

Any way, during this week, I was watering the garden hard, and the new neighbors were out. I pickled and shared a few cucumbers.

Isn't that what Green Wizardry is all about?

Building a community with cooperation and sharing?

ClareBroommaker's picture

Ah, cucumbers! You're speaking my summer of 2018 language-- Cucumbers. I have so far harvested 74 pounds; and I have yet to pick them tonight. I give some to the woman who owns the lot where I garden. She loves cucumbers. The last time I grew cukes, she took pounds and pounds to the restaurant she manages at a community center. That was about 8 years ago. This year, I am pickling, so I don't have enough to send to the community center. I have also given a few to the guy who gave me grass clippings that are mulching the sweet peppers. Hmm, I did not get to weigh those, so I guess my harvest really is over 75 pounds so far.

I have never had steamed cucumber, but I have been served cucumber fried in a corn meal batter, like some fry fish in. Odd, because that cucumber tasted like fish to me. Not like good fish either. I didn't like it.

Here's another use of cukes: Peel them, cut into chunks and freeze. Put the frozen chunks into a blended with ice, lime, and what ever sweetener you like. Really refreshing. Goes well with gin stirred in.

I'm eating salads with little else besides cucumbers. Maybe some onion, maybe some purslane. Mostly just cukes with Italian dressing. Or sometimes I peel a cuke and just hold it in my hand and eat it as if it were an ice cream cone. Had cucumber for breakfast today. That was with some ground turmeric and black pepper stirred into Italian dressing.

We also have already finished eating two quarts of half sours and started on the next two quarts.

Hang on, I'm going to the basement to do a pickle count......

.....Okay, I'm counting we've made 9.25 gallons of pickles. All but 7 pints of that is fermented. Most of it is in gallon jars, but if I give any away I will split it into smaller jars. It takes 4 pounds of cucumbers to make a gallon.

In some book about Afghanistan, the author spoke of people putting strips of cucumber under their hats in summer for evaporative cooling. I asked my friend from Afghanistan and she told me it is true that people do that.

Regarding sharing, I gave a peach tree and pepper plants to the new renters two houses away. But not until my husband took them the leftovers from a canning plums --mushed out from cooking as they were not appropriate plums for canning-- did they start happily saying hello every time they see us. Guess they really liked those mushy plums.