Melons!

One of my favorite quotes about vegetable gardening is something like, "It's often easier to learn to love what you can grow than it is to grow what you love".

When I think of this quote, melons come to mind.  I loves me a good, sweet honeydew or deep juicy watermelon.  But being coastal here in the Bay Area--and those melons need lots of inland heat--I've been sticking to melons I have a fighting chance with.  And for us in Southern Sonoma County, that's cantaloupe and Crane Melons.

For about 3 years now, I've been growing a variety of cantaloupe the book "Golden Gate Gardening" recommended, which is Sugar Cube.  New to me this year is Crane Melons, which I tried because I live less than 4 miles from the Crane Melon Barn.  So that seemed an obvious choice. 

And these have not disappointed.  As you can see, they're much smaller than what you find in the store.  But they pack a surprising amount of fruit that is juicy and delicious. 

Unlike the store bought, you don't lose the outside inch to heavy skin and flavorless fruit.  I literally pare these like I would an apple.

Cut them in half, scoop out the seeds, and you get a pretty decent amount of fruit. 

And they beat anything you'd buy at the grocery store.

This was my first time growing and eating Crane Melons.  While larger than my Sugar Cube cantaloupe, mine still ended up smaller than the ones I've seen on line.  But oh, are they juicy.  Not quite as sweet as the cantaloupe, they are still tasty and worth the effort.

So who knows?  Maybe now that I've gained a few years of success with melons, I may scour the internet for a good variety of watermelon to try.  I gave Honeydew a try last year, and was not impressed with the sweetness, and I may find the same fate with watermelon.  If so, that's okay.  I'll be happy with my Cranes and Cantaloupes. 

As the saying goes, learn to love what you can grow!

Happy Gardening!

In Search of The Perfect Dill Pickle

Friday was devoted to fast and easy refrigerator beets.  Today, I went full-homestead and processed a batch of cucumber pickle chips.

 

I've only made dill pickles once, and while they turned out perfectly crisp, my husband hated the pre-mixed pickling spice I'd used.  I confess, it wasn't what I'd expected either, and I'm guessing the culprits were cinnamon and possibly star anise.  So I'm coming back this year with a much simpler recipe where I control everything that goes into the mix.

I started with a plain old Hamburger Dills recipe from the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving.

Then made the following adjustments (because c'mon--I gotta make it my own!):

• I replaced 1 quart of white vinegar with 3 1/2 C white vinegar and 1/2 C apple cider vinegar.  This wasn't intentional.  I ran out of white and was too lazy to go to the store.  But maybe it will be brilliant!
• I also added red onion slices, as a carry-over from last year's batch.  Not only are they pretty in the jar, pickled onions are delicious in everything you would use pickles for.  So why not combine the two?
• I doubled the peppercorns because two per jar seemed chintzy.
• I added a few dried hot pepper flakes.  Hopefully, not enough to make these "hot" pickles.  But I wanted a little bite.
• Added 1 small dried bay leaf per jar.
  

Another thing I've learned about myself:  I don't have the energy to plant both slicing cucumbers and pickling cucumbers.  

I tried that a couple years ago and never had enough pickling cucumbers to make a batch of pickles.  Mostly because I refuse to give up too much space in my garden for pickles.  So last year I tried just pickling my regular slicing cucumbers, and they turned out fine! 

So that's my plan, at least while I'm experimenting with recipes.  If I get a real winner, maybe I'll play more with the varieties I'm growing, either by growing pickling cucumbers again, or just keeping to my slicing cucumbers but not letting them get so big.  For sure, pickles are harder to pack when the slices are large, not to mention the seeds.  But without a winner-winner pickling recipe, my slicers are doing perfectly fine double-duty.

So we will see how well this recipe turned out.  I like to give them 4 weeks before I open a jar and see what I've got.  So now we wait!