Oooo that sounds great. We’ve just been adding the Thai to the sweet basil and making pine nut and olive oil pesto. Gives it a slightly different flavor.
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Did another budget stool:
A couple of metres of cheapy construction pine plus a little bit of Tasmanian Oak.
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If I ever get around to clearing out my cellar & garage to the point that I can access my workbench and tools, making one of those is on the top of the list:
3 boards of spruce, finger-joined, a stick of beech, two strips of beech as runners.
Simple, elegant, robust, versatile.
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Well the pickles came out oddly bland. I put 2 heads of garlic in there! Also an odd aftertaste- I wonder of it’s from the Redman salt I used. And the killer- not much crunch. I didn’t know I needed a tannin source. The books and articles I read said the grapeleaf was optional and I can’t source even dried ones around here. I did read, later, I can substitute part of an Oak leaf, if I know it hasn’t been sprayed. Only part bc oak leaves have a lot of tannin and an whole one can cause bitterness. So I drained this one and put the solids in the compost. Next try looks like this:
so maybe dill seeds next roundNext to it are habanero/ginger/garlic/onion/red oak and jalapeños/garlic/onion/red oak. Those are doing nicely- good crunch and flavor so far.
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Is that the beautiful inlay or the entire top? It looks good.
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Oddly we’ve had little success with chilies in Tucson: we can getting them fine, but the heat is always just a little disappointing. Madam Mrs. the Ratel has a theory that humidity (or lack of) is connected.
Same here: tasted normal (used a regular recipe), but mushy and unappetizing. They just felt more decomposed than pickled.
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The entire top.
The bits showing through are the tops of the pine legs, which are hand-cut round wedged tenons.
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Well, the Super Sweet 100 tomatoes are busy leveling up to Super Sweet 1000. They’ve gotten a bit out of hand. We’ve trimmed at least 1/3 of what you see off this season. But then we forgot to trim more and now the two (that is only two plants) plants have overtaken a basil, two other tomato types we weren’t happy with, the parsley, 2 strawberry plants, and 2 pepper plants. The two of them are easily 10 feet left to right and 3 feet across to the back. You’re seeing about 6 feet from this perspective.
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I have the same variety, and it started out so promising. Now it’s kinda sad. I’ve gotten maybe a couple dozen tomatoes off it so far. Something is snipping the flower buds and immature fruit right off the fruiting stalks, and I don’t know what. No obvious caterpillars or bugs on it. Same with my Brandywine. Fits the rest of existence this year.
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Huh. Could be birds? Maybe drape them in netting. Or it’s blossom drop from heat preventing pollination or nitrogen deficiency.
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our garden completely exploded this year.
several plants, despite trimming, grew tall enough to collapse before we got around to trimming them down again.
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Do the plants call “Feed me!” at night?
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While you people are all growing your gardens, I’m putting my Covid time to a much better use:
Rolling out Silly Putty as long as I can. Can any of you beat my record of 80" (203 cm)? Combining multiple eggs is cheating.
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The secret to crispy pickles is an ice water bath for 15 minutes before packing them in the jars.
eta: I learned this in the 80s by trial and error and lots of old cookbooks. I used to have a 10x20’ organic garden, and one year I decided to try pickles. The cukes exploded and produced for 2 months, so I had a lot of veggies to practice on.
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I packed 5 gallons of pickles yesterday. Wish I knew this ice water trick. Oh well. Thanks!
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Totally trying this next week.
The lastest batch came out wierd and disgusting. Plenty of crunch, great aroma, but an overwhelming off taste. I experimented with including some apple cider vinegar and I think that plus too many mustard seeds might have been the culprit. I accidently put in as many seeds as I should for a gallon pickle when I’m doing quarts.
In good news, the pepper pickles turned out well. We’ll see about the latest cucumber batch.
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