Canning Refrigerator Pickles

Canning refrigerator pickles from your garden grown cucumbers is very easy and gives you edible sweet pickles that you can eat within four or five days, instead of having to wait five or six weeks for regular sweet pickles to cure.

Growing the cucumbers is also extremely easy and one plant can provide an abundance of cucumbers to use for pickling. I planted 8 plants and was overwhelmed by produce. I have pickles in brine, for whole dilled pickles. I also have a pantry full of  bread and butter pickles, dill chips, sweet pickle spears and dilled pickle halves.

The following recipe for the refrigerator pickles should be followed without making any changes. This is a sweet pickle that will last in the refrigerator for about 60 days.

8 cups of thinly sliced cucumbers (3 large cucumbers).

1 ½ cups of thinly sliced sweet yellow onion (use red onion for added color).

¼ cup of sliced red bell pepper

¼ cup of sliced green bell pepper.

Making the brine.

Bring the following ingredients to a boil in a medium saucepan. Stir this combination often. Boil for 3–5 minutes. Pour this mixture over the cucumber, bell pepper and onions. Mix well and let stand to cool. Fill your jars and chill for 3-5 days before eating to let flavors migrate into the cucumbers.

2 cups of White Granulated sugar.

2 cups of White Vinegar (5%).

1 tablespoon of pickling salt.

1 tablespoon of Celery Seed.

1 ½ teaspoon of Mustard Seed.

This recipe makes 2 quarts.

Why do I vegetable garden?

When you vegetable garden, you are investing a lot of time, effort and energy into this endeavor. You do it for the health benefits that come from working the soil as well as eating your bounty. You do it to share the harvest and to preserve for the future months. It takes time to learn what works and what doesn’t.

You certainly do not learn it overnight. But failure is bound to show its ugly face from time to time, due to bad weather like heavy rain and wind, incorrect planning or scheduling like planting too early or too late and other problems like pest control issues (weeds, insects and diseases).

You will get used to common practices in the garden that are mainstays such as composting. Every great garden has a compost heap within the garden or at least nearby. 

A good gardener will use EVERY resource made available to them like materials that will keep feeding the heap. Look for stables in your area for a constant supply of manure. Raise your own livestock to supply yourself with your own manure. I raise rabbits and it’s one of the best manures around, in my opinion!

As our world is changing politically, our government is making it harder to get our money’s worth, so look for heirloom varieties of seeds that you can save seed from, for each succeeding season. Collect and share seed. It’s a great way to make friends and to try new varieties that have never grown in your garden. 

Share your bounty with others and it will come back to you. I practice paying it forward on a regular basis, and have been blessed in many ways because of it.

When it comes to harvesting, do it at the right time. Your plants produce the best tasting produce when taken from the plant at the right time. Harvest too early and you have to ripen veggies inside the house (if they will ripen off of the plant), loosing flavor and sacrificing nutrients. Harvest too late and you lose the benefit of those same nutrients too.

In regard to processing, harvesting properly is one of the most important steps in your effort to provide for your family. Learn what type of processing works best for each vegetable. Canning is not always the answer. As well, neither is dehydrating. Find out what works best for the veggie you intend to process and also what works best for you. Find a good, tough, vacuum sealer. This will become one of the best tools in your kitchen.

At the end of the day, I can say that most every day that I’ve done something related to my garden, has been a wonderful experience. Don’t let failure keep you from growing a garden every year. 

Don’t let someone else change your mind just because you miss the mark. I’ve had more failures than I would really want to admit, but they haven’t stopped me. I now have a 7,000 square foot garden and it produces all sorts of good things for my family and me, so GO FOR IT!

How to Make Dilled Pickles (Fresh Pak)

Today was the perfect day for canning, so I went out to the garden and harvested about 18 pounds of pickling cucumbers and 14 really nice dill weed stems from the vegetable garden and got busy.

I started off by cleaning the cucumbers and slicing off the flower end and stem too.
Once washed, I sliced them in half and placed them into a large container.

These cucumbers were not treated in any kind of brine prior to placing them into jars. This is a fresh pak method and does not require pre-treatment of any kind.

After my jars and lids were washed and sterilized, I filled the hot jars with the halves and set them aside. Each jar got a sprig of dill weed and one tablespoon of minced garlic. I used 1/8 of a teaspoon of “Pickle Crisp,” and then filled each jar with the brine recipe listed below.

With all of the air bubbles worked out and the jar tops wiped off, I covered each jar with a lid and band, just hand tight. Into the hot water bath canner they went for 15 minutes.

Once processed, I pulled them out to cool for 24 hours before I labeled them and put them into the pantry.




The following recipe is for 16 lbs. of pickling cucumbers, making 14 quarts. You can do the math to reduce, or increase if necessary.
2 quarts of water
2 quarts of white vinegar
6 tablespoons of pickling spice
1 and ½ cups of sugar
1 cup of pickling salt
One large sprig of dill weed per quart jar
1 tablespoon of minced garlic per quart jar
1/8 teaspoon of Pickle Crisp
Here’s the result of this recipe:

If you do not have canning equipment, here is a “starter canning kit” link. It’s a great kit. I started out with it and it has proven to be a great purchase.

How to Make Bread and Butter Pickles

Enjoy the cool sweet flavor of Bread and Butter pickles on everything from hot dogs to salads or just eat them alone. This sweet summertime sensation is sure to bring back memories of family picnics and at home cookouts. Always use the freshest cucumbers that you can find. It’s best to harvest them from your own garden. If you don’t have a garden, the next best choice for purchasing them would be from a farmers market. Always ask the grower when they were harvested. Purchase a little more than the recipe calls for to be sure you have enough. You don’t want to be left short.
Clean the cucumbers and cut off the blossom end. This end carries some proteins that may help to cause spoilage. You only need to remove about 1/16 of an inch from the bottom end of the cucumber. You can use a hot water bath canner for this process. Ample canning supplies can be found by clicking here. The preparation time to get the cucumbers ready for processing is going to be at least 3 hours prior to canning.
Follow these preparation instructions: Place 8 pounds of ¼ inch sliced cucumbers, 3 pounds of thinly sliced onions and ½ cup of pickling salt in a very large container. Put a layer of cucumbers, then salt, then onions. Repeat this process until you’ve used all of your cucumbers, onions and salt. Cover the entire container with ice. Let this stand for at least 2 hours. Drain and rinse twice after the 2 hours. Please read the entire recipe by clicking here.

How to Grow Carrots

Every vegetable garden should grow at least one variety of carrots. Once you’ve grown them, I’m certain you’ll be hooked. I grew a row of 10 carrots wide by 25 feet long.

That’s a lot of carrots and to my surprise, although I have a bunny running around the garden at night, not one of the carrots was destroyed! I will admit that a few of the leaves were eaten, but no digging or other damage.

I started all of my carrots by seed, and yes it is a little tough planting all of those tiny seeds, but the benefits were quite obviously worth the trouble. 

I prepared the soil with plenty of compost and raised the bed up to as high as 18 inches. I planted in a row three feet wide, which equaled to a thinned row of ten carrots per row. 

I also planted each row three inches apart, so, my calculations tell me that at harvest time, barring any lose to rabbits, insects and diseases; I could easily harvest 1,000 carrots…That’s a lot of rabbit food.

After the seed germinated, I thinned the plants to three inches apart. I then spent the next several weeks watching them grow. 

Carrots have a beautiful, fernlike top, so it was a pleasure watching them wave in our Texas breezes. I checked them daily as they grew, and enjoyed the growth spurts after a wonderful rain, or after fertilizing.

Because I planted early, I had very little problem with pests. Right as I began to harvest some of them, I noticed some small grasshoppers starting to get interested in the tops. 

While harvesting, I noticed a caterpillar starting to munch. This caterpillar was so very small, that I could not really tell what it was, and quite honestly at this point I did not care.
I processed the carrots by cutting off the tops. Those tops immediately went back into the compost pile. I then cleaned them and did any necessary additional trimming. I put them on ice and made a plan for canning them.
Once I found a good recipe, I broke out the canning gear and got busy in the kitchen. 16 pints later and I have a great feeling of accomplishment. To know that I can feed my family by the planning and hard work put into my vegetable garden just makes me feel really good.

I hope you are having some of the same successes as I am having. Please feel free to join us on my Facebook page, where I hope you will come and participate by asking questions, and posting your photos.

Canning Homemade Salsa

With fresh homegrown tomatoes from your garden, why not try canning your own homemade salsa? Using fresh tomatoes and other fresh vegetables like onions, jalapeno peppers, garlic and fresh cilantro, you are certain to produce a great tasting, ready for a Saturday afternoon chips and salsa fest out by the swimming pool.

This recipe is very simple and takes just a short time to cook like most other hot water bath canning methods. Since tomatoes already have a lot of acid in them, the use of similar amounts of vinegar as you would use in preparing pickles is not necessary. You’ll see that this recipe calls for only 1 ½ cup of cider vinegar to produce 4 quarts of finished salsa.

Follow all of the normal hot water bath canning preparations, getting all of the necessary tools at the ready. Sterilize all of your jars, lids and bands. Bring your canning pot of water to just under a boil. When you have filled your jars with the hot salsa mixture, seal the jars with your hot lids and bands and process (boil) for 15 minutes. Pull jars from the canner and let stand for at least 12 hours prior to putting them up in the pantry. Make sure the lids have been sucked down and have the proper seal.

Please read the rest of the recipe by clicking here.