Archives January 2008

Phyllis really likes bread and butter pickles and although I prefer garlic dills I have to admit a good bread and butter pickle goes with almost any sandwich. Well maybe not peanut butter.
I remember back when I was first exposed to this type of pickle, in my mothers canning cupboard. I was a little confused by the presents of many things that I did not consider to be pickle. Of course the cucumber was identifiable but why were there onions in there and what are those little round things and other strange looking ( to me ) things that settled to the bottom of the jar?
Since in those days, I did not pay much attention to my mothers canning, there was no way for me to know about the various spices and vegetables that were combined to give the bread and butter pickle its sweet and spicy flavor.

Fast forward to 2004 and we were getting ready to plant our first official garden at our new place. As the seeds began to arrive in March we noticed a pack of cucumbers that we did not order. I believe it was from Park Seeds. It was called the Eureka Cucumber and we were not sure we wanted to plant them. They looked a bit squat and stubby and not like a pealing cucumber at all. But waste not want not, we started some and set them out to grow on the stick fence that surrounds the asparagus garden. We put a few more of them in the row gardens with no staking.
The weather that year was a bit wet to begin with but they did well. We were really surprised at how fast they went from fingerling to full blown cukes. That is if you can call a 6″ by 2″ or 3″ cuke full blown. We sliced up a few and they were OK for eating but the trouble was they were coming in by the peck each day. We put some on the stand and they sold but we had many more than we could possibly deal with.

Since they were billed as a dual use cuke, for pickles and slicing, we decided to put some up. The fruits were rather fleshy with medium sized seeds and they would become fat and yellow in a day if we did not pick them in time. So we continued to picked them and kept them cool.
We decided to make both bread and butter and dill pickles but in the end we made 2 versions of the bread and butter and one of the dills. As it turned out they worked perfect for the former and not so hot for the latter. The problem with the dills is they were soft and opaque, and not to my liking. The kids on the other hand made short work of the dills.
We found the recipes at at the Minnesota cooperative extension web site. We use them a lot since their climate is similar to ours.

Our favorites were the spicy bread and butter pickle. We omitted the liming process and they were fine. The trick is to get them just as they are ripe, because if you wait a day more they become soft and not so good.

We have run out of pickles and we went to the store to see what was available. We were very disappointed when we found every version of bread and butter pickle had high fructose corn syrup as a sweetener. Except for one and that one had Splenda. This is a perfect example of why it is far better to put up your own. I am ordering the seeds this week.

There is a phenomenon long observed in the north country called the “January Thaw”.

I don’t really know and can not remember if it thaws every January but at least when warm weather interrupts our winter we have something to call it. I don’t think we have to completely thaw, that is all show and ice melting, but the weather must be above freezing for at least a few days.

For example, the weather goes from ten below zero to 20 F. we sarcastically remark, “well that’s our January thaw”, but in reality this example does not count. To be an official January thaw the temperatures would need to stay above freezing for 2 or 3 days.

In this years thaw everything is melted. The temperature has stayed above 32 degrees for something like a week or so, even at night. Phyllis came up from the greenhouse the other day and said she could hear the water sinking into the ground. With the early snow cover and now this warm weather the ground is not frozen yet and is more or less like a sponge.

This is good because we can easily open the cellar and greenhouse door and we are not using a lot of oil. But it is not so good in that the perennials are going up and down in temperature. It is better if they stay frozen for the winter and that is why we keep them in the shade this time of year. That way sun does not melt the show covering the containers.

It now looks like our temperatures will slowly drift back down to the 20’s and 30’s and that is fine with us. We can remember years when the temperature stayed below zero F. for weeks at a time, dipping to 30 and 40 below so anything in the 20’s and above is balmy by comparison.

This time of year our mail box is chock full of seed catalog. Every year we get more and more so we thought it would be fun to highlight some of the more interesting, useful and unusual ones, so here is our seed catalog review.

The other day we received a catalog that we have not seen before. It is R.H. Shumway’s Illustrated Garden Guide. The first thing we noticed was the size. Not the thickness, this catalog is 10 inches wide and 13 1/2 inches tall. For you metric types that’s about 14 furlongs by half a hogs head.

The catalog is profusely illustrated in black and white, much like the wall street journal and there is a photo of the old boy him self with the caption, ” The American Pioneer Seedsman”.

The “Guide” is more of a catalog with the usual items and a few odd balls like cranberry plants. But just because it calls its self a guide doesn’t make it so. In order for a catalog to be a guide there should be some growing tips and information. Although this catalog has a feel like a farmers almanac, there is non of the sage advice we were hoping for.

We went to the website and were more disappointed. It is so bad we will not put a link here but if you try you should be able to figure it out. Any site that has images that claim, “no image” needs work.
I think they have a good idea but poor execution. We would give this catalog a 2 on a scale from 1 to 10.

This year has been funny in that we have had some snow cover since November. Funny in that for the past few years the winter has been relatively dry. When we do not get much snow fall the ground tends to free faster than when there is cover.

And in spite of the fact that we have had snow, the temperatures have been above 0 degrees Fahrenheit. This combination of warm relatively warm temperatures and snow cover means the ground has not total frozen.

As a matter of fact Phyllis was able to pull the paver blocks up from in-front of the greenhouse door with no problem. We have 4 – 18″ square blocks in front of the door to the greenhouse so that a mud hole does not form in wet weather. Normally they would be frozen to the earth and we would need to pry them up with a crowbar. As a matter of fact in past winters the ground would heave by now, from being frozen, to the point where the pavers make it impossible to fully open the door.

One problem is the stone around the green houses is not frozen so when we run the snow-blower around the outside it tends to pick up some of the gravel. It really is no problem for the snow blower but if a lot is removed we will have to replenish it.

This year is not shaping up to be much of a zone 4 climate, more like zone 6 or 7 !
The warmer weather and cover may allow us to have a good wintering for the perennial garden plants. We put them up in gallon pots and winter them over in 2 beds which measure 5′ by 20′ each. The beds are made from 2″ by 12″ larch and we fill them up with next years perennial plants.

The beds are situated so they stay in the shade until late spring so the sun does not have a chance to melt the covering snow. These plants usually come through stronger and are ready for the garden in late spring until fall.

In the spring the sun get up to a point to where the beds are in full sun from the end of March until October which is perfect for wintering. We only hope the voles stay away.