A Better Way To Grow Pickling Cucumbers
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ส.ค. 2024
- I have been growing varieties of cucumbers for producing lots of smaller cucumbers that are more suitable for pickling. I wanted to find out if it was better to just let them grow on the surface of the soil, or to train them up twine, and I think it depends on how long of the summer I want to be kept busy making pickles.
0:00 Pickles aren’t really a thing in Ireland
1:13 Selecting varieties
3:23 2 varieties and 3 ways to grow
4:56 Plants growing horizontally
6:14 Plants growing vertically
7:54 Harvesting frequency and size
9:25 How many jars of pickles?
11:07 Shorter or longer crop?
12:58 Should I Start a Pickle Business?
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Love your approach to these researches.
🙂
What a legend you are!
:)
Thanks for another great video. I was hoping for a guide on how you pickle your gherkins
My climate in South Texas is radically different from yours, so our techniques will likewise be different, but I thank you for continuing to publicize so much useful information with infographics and varietals of different food items. We need more of this everywhere so more people start to experiment with growing their own food locally. Personally, I would love to do some lactofermentation with cucumbers, but the Hmong variety I have is more suited to making cucumber water than pickling.
Thank you!
Is your Hmong cucumber a white/yellowish variety? I also have it.
@@REDGardenswhat recipe do you use for this jars? Is it the same for the three types ?
Thanks for the reminder of why cukes are one of my least favorite crops, just too much upkeep and by midsummer I always seem to end up abandoning them to their own efforts. Here's an idea for you for next year. A few years ago I planted a 3'x60' bed of Evie day neutral strawberries in one of my tunnels. They started producing in April and gave me strawberries pretty much every day all summer and are still producing great berries the end of October. Being indoors with drip irrigation there's no disease or slugs, no rot from rain, the berries are of exceptional quality and the original plants have been producing strong for several years now. Definitely one of my most successful trials. Don't know about you family, but by providing my partner with a pint of raspberries and a pint of strawberries most every day all summer it keeps her pretty darn happy!
I have some strawberries in one of the polytunnels and it is so great to be able to harvest that earlier crop.
love the information about Ireland.
If you are considering selling pickles, you might want to make the fermented ones in large batches. 5 to 15 gallons per batch and sell them as bulk pickles using the customers own containers. Saves you a lot of time!
As I mentioned before, my results from the cultured ferments experiment was eye opening! Lactobacillus Delbrueckii all the way! Get a pure culture and make your life better!
Something I learned this season was that dill can be a roadblock for making your pickles if you are going to be making a lot of them. So next year I will be planting dill every 3 weeks to ensure that I will have dill at the perfect stage of growth for all my bi-weekly batches. I prefer it when the inflorescence has just unfurled but the flowers are still premature.
So... is there a cucumber trial in our future???
I would like to explore fermenting a lot more, and I also need to grow more dill!
Great video again Bruce, best gardening channel on the net 🎉
🙂
Great video. I think we all want to see you pickling!
Any chance you will share your recipes? I am still searching for the right ones and yours do look very tasty. ☺ As a Canadian with lots of Irish roots, I am surprised about the lack of pickles in Ireland. Very Interesting. Boy they really missed out.
Yeah, the lack of a preserving culture in Ireland in general is quite interesting. I think a lot of it is due to a combination of the relatively warm winters, reliance on potatoes, and the poverty enforced on most of there population by colonialism.
Pickles are high quality food! I also like pickled peppers, carrots, garlic, onions and greens like sauerkraut and especially kimchi!
thanks im starting pickling cucumbers for the first time.
Thank you for adding imperial units , it really helps me stay focused on the information to not have to convert measurements in my head
Glad to help
I never knew Ireland wasn't a pickle country. Now i'm fascinated to study what the traditional methods of preserving food there are. Maybe there is something we can learn over here.
They pretty much just ate potatoes and milk.
It is a topic I have been interested in for a while, and it seems that with the mild winters here in Ireland there is less of a need to preserve. That in combination with the extreme poverty forced on most of the population by colonialism, meant that preserving was not really an affordable option, and people could survive on the potatoes.
Very informative.
Confirms what I've always thought about growing these jewels.
Oh how Id love to have some of his buckets.
I continue to prefer planting through a trellis of wire or mesh netting so they just grow hanging down for easy picking.
overhead.
Well done!
This year, I planted six of each Variety indoors in April: Straight 8, and Spacemaster 80 (both larger 8 inch variety) and I was successful in raising 4 of each variety of these. Not bad yield, but less than other years. My suspicion was, the EXTREMELY wet spring and summer resulted in less germination.
I also planted a dozen Muncher, and dozen Boston Pickling varieties (Also indoors April). Both are better for pickling: smaller in length 4-6 inches, less seed, and thinner skins, etc. I started with 8 each during early summer, and found an abysmally low amount of flowers. And those flowers had VERY low germination. I usually leave it to nature, and the bees, but, this year, after failed germination for a few weeks, I resorted to hand pollination. Still, I believe I had about 30% or so of a typical harvest, over the course of Summer into September. I managed to get some pint jars of Sweet Bread and Butter Pickles, and a few jars of Dill. A mix of Sliced, and small full sized dill. Still, very disappointed in the harvest. Mostly, I feel that the pouring rains prevented the pollinators from doing their "business" As of this weekend, 17 of 20 weekends of rains. And Most of June and July, a few days of rains during the week, with some weeks fully rainy.
this video goes very hard
love from usa
I love homemade pickles so much you wouldn't believe
🙂
The issue you have with jars can be solved with a trip to IKEA they sell a variety of different size pickling jars
Thank you for your work!
Similar jar scene in the UK, £2-3 per jar only getting a bit cheaper if you buy over 100, even used mayo jars are selling on auction sites thesdays.
I appreciate your reminder of your holistic context and research/educational mission when opportunities to spin out profitable businesses present themselves. Thank you!
🙂
Cucumbers (marketmore) are completely fine outside if sheltered etc. Needs south and shelter but they do jusy fine!
Something I would need to try, but the shelter thing is the tough one for me. Easier to find space in the polytunnel than a sheltered space in the gardens.
Great video! I prefer eating "pickling" cumbers as my salad cucumbers. I think they taste the best without all the moisture.
I like them too.
Once again great video thank you!
All great info!
Like always, a godd experience information, useful for my own test. Always I found good new ideas for growing and harvesting
My cucumbers were so successful this year that I was scared of losing my friends because I offered them so many😊
Birdy
I enjoyed your video immensely! You were very thorough in your presentation and provided a kot if insight into how you approach self sufficiency with regard to food. I live in deep south Texas in the Rio Grande Valley. Here we usually have sunny hot sunmer days aomost year round that can be a challenge to many hone crops. Some people just give up in the hottest part of our summers. I grew pickling cucumbers this summer in two areas of my yard, open sun and partially under the porch overhang, both in ground. No matter the amount of water, the bright sunny crop fought a loosing battle and eventually died. However the the crop planted under the over hang did very well. I found the plants did better when the lower leaves were left intact and trimmed just above the ground with additional leaves mulched around the liwer stems to prevent evaporation. I believe this because at one point a family member decided to "trim the bottom leaves" after which the plants quickly experienced sun scald and stopped fruiting. I have been wanting to look into getting a small high tunnel to try vertical growing and am encouraged by your video. Keep up the good work. I look forward to viewing more of your videos.
Thanks! That is a very different climate for growing! Not many vegetables grow well in the shade around here, and definitely not the warmer season crops.
lactofermented gurken are so good.
Your pickles look amazing😋. I have yet to grow them successfully in North Florida but I have not given up.
Suggestion for the horizontal growing, if you have access to t post fence posts, it might be easy to adapt your wire frame to just above waist height for easier harvesting
That sounds like an interesting option. Thanks.
This is one of my favourite reasons for gardening: growing food that I enjoy and can’t reasonably purchase.
I don’t have a tunnel, but have been trying different trellis constellations for my cukes to take over once the mangetout peas are done.
That is one of the best reasons!
Would also love to know your recipe for ghurkins!
Another wonderful trial! Very surprised to see that the lower batch did so well, I was expecting the single-twine batch to produce a lot more per m2.
Thanks for the great research. It helps a lot!
It would be interesting to do the trial again, to see if there is a different result with out the issue of the pests.
Great video👏Very informative, thorough and backed with relatable data. Will try and grow the pickling variety this Spring🤞 Cucumbers area difficult crop here in the Northeast. The long, "Armenian" variety has been a good product. Thank You for sharing and for your honesty regarding the joy and "boredom" of harvesting.😊
Thanks for the comment. Hope you have a good crop, and don't get bored too early in the season!
Haha nice that you want to plan even more plants although you had 180kg already. Great results, really astonishing. My cucumbers (pickle gurken hehe) just died in may.
Yeah, it is kind of crazy, but I'm thinking I would rather produce a lot more pickles a week for 5 weeks, than to keep the plants going with increasing time spent with care and harvesting for 10 weeks.
Yum!
Growing gherkins for pickling is big business over here and we grow both in the greenhouse and later outside on the field. Whilst the season is shorter here at least we have enough dry warm weather to be able to grow them on the field. I tend to let them sprawl and like you prune if they get out of hand. I plant in a sort of 5 dot dice pattern along a 75cm x 10m bed. Interestingly mid summer is seen as the right time (date) to sow outdoor gherkins with many not planting out until July to then harvest through August. Smaller ones are pickled whole or halved and then the bigger overgrown (missed) ones, called 'elephants' locally are sliced to make a delicious 'Ludgales Salad' (sliced gherkins and onions) which I love. I keep meaning to experiment with better ways to grow them but they pretty much look after themselves as long as you water and feed them. First frost (early Sept usually), stops production. I know Latvians have moved and settled in Ireland so I'm not surprised they've started to become more common. My MIL makes the most amazing pickled gherkins, both types/recipes mentioned are on our channel. Your sliced sweet pickled gherkins look really interesting, is this more like the American Bread & Butter pickles?
Thanks for sharing your experiences with growing pickling cucumbers. I would like to try toeing outside, but would have to adjust the dates to at least 1 month earlier to catch the better weather that we tend to have in June, not August, which is typically quite cool and wet around here. What varieties do you usually grow?
Yes they are a bread and butter pickle!
@@REDGardensA lot of what we've grown has been from saved seed from before my time, one of my bugbears is that MIL never writes anything down. However I tried Adam F1, Basza H, Borus H and Hokus. All performed well and pickled well. I think Adam f1 were in the greenhouse. Last year was a bit of a mess because of having to go to the UK so I didn't keep strict notes but normal service will resume this year. If you ever want some different varieties sent over from here to there just ask and I'll sort it out for you.
I feel you. Also suffered huge cucumber harvest this year. Ended up with constatnly pickling a fermenting untile late september. What is funny that I also planted Alhambra F1 and also got spider mites that fortunately ended the season. But your number of jars is just insane! You will be feeding whole neighborhood and then some :D
I do feed a lot of people!
Love you
I certainly understand getting tired of picking and pickling. I like thumb sized dill pickles. That requires me to pick twice a day or they get too big. The trick is planting dill and horseradish leaf to mature with the cucumbers.
I need to figure out the trick of dill/cucumber timing!
Bruce, pound and a half for each liter
A very interesting video, thanks.
It would be fascinating to see a video, if you have the time, on how you preserve food and what proportion of your own household food you grow and eat. I reckon I’m around 15% but always wondered what you were able to do.
Not sure if I would make a video about it, but and it depends on the season, but we often eat meals that are almost entirely from the gardens, just relying on a bit of oil/butter and salt. Other meals have a lot less from the gardens, but there is almost always something.
If you are going to do a salat cucumber trail, you should test the verity "socrates" it is a F1 designed to be grown commercially in canada.
We have great succes with it outdoor in Denmark.
In dk we normally need to grow cucumbers in polytunnels to get a good yield.
How about growing them vertically, on an arch (made of what they call "cattle panels"). The cucumber will naturally climb to the top, hopefully will come down on the other side, so your harvest will be easier. Don't prune, just remove the dead leaves. You should have lots of small cukes. Speaking of, have you tried cucamelons? They take a long time to take off, but they do deliver. Could be a high value novelty crop.
Sounds like someone in Ireland needs to corner the market on pickles. 😮
Haha!
Thanks you for your amezing content! Are you also trying producing food with agroforestry in your gardens?
I haven't tried agroforestry.
What a crop, it is fantastic. And from just 2 varieties. I wonder which fertiliser you use on them? Here in Nova Scotia last year howling gales discouraged early crops and then slugs galore ate all the seedlings So it wasn't great. while the rain pelted down for about 3 months.However I learnt where the slugs go after their nighttime feasts, under wet cardboard around the raised beds and after that they were easy to deal with, about 100 a day usually. Fertilsers/composts vary so much it is a minefied out there.
I use a general purpose fertiliser, and a mediocre compost on the beds in this garden, and the soil in that polytunnel has become well developed over the years.
Yeah, slugs can be a real issue!
pickles are my thing. would you be open to exchanging seed varieties.
I wonder if having a low wire frame you can pivot to harvest would be helpful
Plant along one side and lift the other to allow for easy picking
That would be an interesting thing to try.
I find that cucumbers grow best when the reach the top of a trellis a start to fall back down like a second wind. I grow my 6 plants under a giant chair shaped trellis only prune when the leaves or branches block out to much light or look sick. Pretty much raise the grate like 2 feet and put a vertical trellis behind it and try to allow them to span out like a wall.
I get them that way a few years ago, and I think I prefer the method of dropping them, but I should try them again side by side.
Cucumba😋
In a home context it might make sense to grow pickling cucumbers only every 2nd or 3rd year and pickle enough for the years without harvest. I mean, to me it's not that much more work to pickle say five jars every few days than pickling one or two every few days. With growing and pickling for a few years the work also needs to be done every few years.
Of course you need more jars and the storage space.
I Like the idea of growing a large enough area to be able to do batches of 8 jars at a time, which is how many jars I can fit in the pasteuriser/hot water bath I have.
cucumber varieties broadly fit into two different categories: market and pickling. you should research a pickling variety that will continue to flower in cooler climate. All cucumbers pickle just fine, however pickling cucumbers are specifically breed for size for jarring. My favorite pickling cucumber is the national pickling cucumber.
I have found that National has 2 genomic varieties, all green with a uniform shape and yellow tipped with the tip end being slightly smaller. Which are you growing?
@@charlespalmer3595 could you point me to information on the two different varieties.
This is my observation after decades of growing them. I prefer the uniform shaped green ones, so I save seed for them. However, to keep my genomic diversity I bring in seeds from various seed sources to add to the diversity every few years and getting the yellow tipped ones is not what I am trying to select for. All the seed packets say National, so how does one pick suppliers? Get your friends to grow the packs in their gardens and see how they turn out! My friends love all the "free" seeds I give them ;)
@@pickleslicesforall
😊👌
I would like to do a similar intensive harvest once every so often, possibly even biannually.
But what about copious amounts of vinegar needed?
I understand it is also something that can be easily homemade. ( Raisins in water for a fortnight?)
Did you have a homemade supply? I'd like to hear your solution.
Not sure if you're fond of that idea, but traditional polish pickled cucumbers (sour pickles?) do not require vingegar, it's just fermentation in salty brine.
They do taste more sour, but I absolutely love ans recommend them.
I typically use apple cider vinegar that I buy in bulk, but have started to experiment making my own from juice pressed from our own apples.
How do you get those lil thorns off the cucumbers? I have tried brushing them off with a sponge but they damaged the sponge... :-/ Or would they just soften up in the pickling process?
Let the cucumber "age" a day or two after picking it and they should wipe off easily with a towel after washing them.
Oh wow, I didn't know that, thank you!!!@@charlespalmer3595
I find that by mixing them together vigorously in a bucket/basin of water when washing them, most of the spikes get rubbed off.
That's a good tip, too, thank you! 👍@@REDGardens
So i noticed a few of your cucumbers were fat on one end and skinny on the other. Mine did that too. What causes that?
2 reasons. one is genetics and all of the fruit will look that way and the other is partial pollination caused by lazy(lack of) pollinators or a dry shock that wilts the flower parts. Lazy looks like waves along the fruit and wilt looks like a gourd.
It seems to be more common on the one variety, mainly later in the season. I suspect it is due to some stress that the plants are experiencing.
Come on man where are the asmr pickling videos?
Haha! That would be cool!
Why not measure yields by calories per m² in addition to measuring the overall weight? I know that calculating calories wouldn't be very useful with things like garlic but at the end of the day you're growing food that you will eat so calories per m² is a significant meteric.
That would be interesting comparison. In general most vegetables are valued for their taste, vitamins, minerals, etc. not for their energy. I think this is especially true with crops like cucumbers. I also believe that the calories contained in a vegetable can be in a huge range, depending on the growing conditions and other factors, but counting calories I would need to use the default data based on mass produced crops. I can guarantee that my really sweet tomatoes have a lot more calories, and all the other vitamins and minerals, than any tomato you can buy in the shop!
Ah yes the sad realization that when trying to do everything, little branches can easily become their own thing, but you have to prune your possibilities in order to enjoy the variety.
A very good analogy (or is it a metaphor, I am not sure of the difference).
You are still the goto channel. Not only for communists but also for those of us who need very helpful information.
"Not only for communists ..." 🤣
It seems to me that if you got 25 jars of pickles a week, then after three weeks you have enough pickled cucumbers to last you five bloody years and you can grow some other things until, say, 2028.
Haha, I think we eat a lot more pickles than that!
*Promo sm* 😬
160kg of cucumbers to process.... now that'd called being in a pickle 😂
Haha, thankfully I didn't process them all!
Be careful about starting a pickle business. Anything food/drink related requires a ton of annoying paperwork, inspections, and licenses that you need to have. Additionally, you have to think about whether you are going to deliver them or have people pick them up. Delivery won't be worth the consumables cost unless you sell in bulk, and collection will require you to be present at the gardens all the time. I tried a similar thing in the past but with alcohol I brewed rather than vegetables. The alcohol sold very well however these major annoyances listed above ultimately made it tedious and not very profitable. You could always consider donating any excess to food banks or other charities.
That is another part of it I would rather avoid!
If ya sell anything don’t forget the taxes and ten percent to local community church. Over triple trouble if not.!!!
The church won't be getting anything from me!
@@REDGardens may be personal however I’m very curious as to why...with your scientific analytical way of doing things... maby you’re like a church already sharing the gospel of you’re labor. And your work will help any and all that have been blessed by your presence... I can’t wait to purchase some seeds to procreate my health promoting future works... Thankyou
@@fuckgoogleandyou8779 I am an atheist
Why don't you try combining your techniques? Get a trellis and let it hang 45 degrees. The plants can be trailed up, while the cucumbers will hang down underneath for easy picking :). By the way, cucumbers are also really good cooked. Google 'cucumber curry'. Those drier, pickling cucumbers would be perfect for this recipe.
the next step is cooking with lactofermented pickles