More Pickles

After Friday's successful batch of Bread and Butter Pickles I decided that I should make more. I bought 6 more pounds of pickling cucumbers and made 8 jars with them today. Last week as I was planning my fall garden I discovered that cucumbers grow quickly and so I looked at area stores for pickling cucumber seeds. I only found slicing cucumbers, but I did buy those and plant them where the mystery squash was. They've already sprouted. Next year I need to plant my own pickling cucumbers.

Also today, I harvested my first batch of the Romano Bush Beans. They are a flat bean, with bulges. I picked about one and half pounds of them. I had thought I might be able to can a jar of dilly beans as I did the pickles, but there were more beans on the bushes than I thought and so I was able to can three jars of dilly beans. The dill came from my garden also.











I first tried dilly beans last Fall and loved them so much that I made a batch over February vacation with store-bought green beans. I also made a version of them with my class this Spring as we studied life on the home front of World War II. The students loved them and they were easy to make with the group.

The beans tend to float after the canning process and they need to cure for a few weeks and absorb the brine. I find that they seem to float less when the jar is upside down. I'm hoping to put up more jars of dilly beans in the coming month because I know that three jars is not enough to keep me satisfied all winter.