Growing dill pickles

Top tips learnt from growing dill pickles

• A long, hot summer will give you a lot
• If you have too many, let them grow bigger and eat as cucumber
• Make sure you and everyone in your family really love pickles

This year we decided to grow dill pickles. I grew from seed cucumber homemade pickles from King Seeds through September and October indoors, in the sun and with watering every day.
I planted these out in late October when the weather was very warm.
I planted about six plants in the sunny position beyond the kumara patch. They were watered regularly and initially covered with netting until the plants were big enough to not be pulled out by the birds.
Once they started, they didn't stop producing and needed to be checked every day.
At one time the old fridge, my husband uses for keeping fermenting beer at the right temperature, was full of dill pickles fermenting. The photograph below is the first lot before another jar was also added. The pottery crock is full of pickles fermenting. The big pottery crock was filled several times over the season with fermenting pickles.

Fermenting sour pickles start to take over the beer fridge

Letting dill pickles ferment naturally produces the traditional sour pickles. These are delicious but different to the sweet preserved pickles you may be used to from the supermarket.
I used Alton Brown's sour pickle recipe.
I did get sick of translating the imperial measurements of this recipe so below are the metric amounts I used or adjusted to the right ratios, depending on the size of the jar and weight of cucumbers:

• 155g salt, approximately 1/2 cup
  
• 3.78 litres filtered water
  
• 1.36 kg pickling cucumbers
  
• 1 tablespoon black peppercorns
  
• 1 tablespoon red pepper flakes
  
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
  
• 1 teaspoon dill seed
  
• 1 tablespoon dill tips
  

Fermented pickles keep best if the pickles are whole, so you need big jars for storage. The ones I ended up slicing lengthwise to fit in smaller jars, have gone soft as the months have gone on.

If you prefer the supermarket style pickles, Alton Brown's kinda sorta sour pickles recipe are as good as any you buy. They also can be eaten straight away or I have also kept some of these jars sealed and they have lasted the distance and stayed crunchy many months later. In Alton's recipe he uses champagne and cider vinegar. I used all cider vinegar but also - because I was making these a lot - I used rice wine vinegar and any other vinegar we had in the house!

By the end of the cucumber season, the whole bottom shelf of the fridge and some of the preserving shelf was full of pickles! This may be more than we can eat before next season. We may have over pickled.