More on Jewel Weed

...But not much more.  As I wrote last fall, my bleeding heart bed also has jewel weed.  Last summer was a bad year but this year it's back in force.  I did have to water it a couple of times but it's growing strongly now.

It's not blooming as profusely as it has in some years, but it still looks nice.  The plants themselves are not unattractive.  They go well with the landscaping scheme where they are.  Soon they'll set seed then die back to the ground and just disappear.

As I noted last year, I don't have any in the woods or anyplace else that I have acres of poison ivy--just in this one little bed, and I don't know where it first came from.  I did not get around to harvesting seed last year but I'm going to try to this year.  This is one weed worth spreading around.

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

After the quick jar-filling exercise with the dill pickles, I got what I thought was an inspired notion to keep the cucumbers more or less together after slicing crosswise, as for bread and butter pickles.  That, I thought, would help fill the jars faster because I could just dump in the poker chip-like stacks of cucumbers that were all aligned with each other, then fill in the gaps with shards of sliced onion.

It didn't really work out as planned.  These cucumbers were a little larger in diameter, but as I was packing the jars I belatedly recalled that I had to break up single-cucumber sets and fit the long  spears into a lot of small spaces while jar-packing with the dills.  It may have helped some, but wasn't the quick and easy fix I'd anticipated.  Still, packing went a lot faster for this second batch of the season.

It also illustrates at least one reason why smaller cucumbers are favored for pickling.  I've canned some huge ones. But it is undeniably easier with smaller cucumbers.

In other news, the cost of cucumbers, onion, sugar, and spices for this batch was less than $15 for 8 quarts (actually, 7 quarts and 2 pints).  A quick check of Amazon finds bread and butter pickles going for about $2 per pint or more--many varieties are made with high fructose corn syrup, though sugared (and even sugar-free) types are available.  As long as the time value doesn't exceed half the minimum wage, homemade ones are a bargain...

Dill Pickles

It's one of the most basic things to do in canning: dill cucumber pickles.  Even so, I think I have only made a couple of batches in my life.  I have an inventory and canning log going back to 2012 and it shows no dill pickles, only bread and butter ones--which I do most summers.  There's no garden this year, but in the past, my first choice with the cucumbers I harvested has been to do the sweet ones rather than dills.  The same has held when I've bought cucumbers for pickling.

That being said, I've wanted to get back into dill pickles for a while.  This year I finally have, and the process I followed was pretty easy.

The NCHFP page on fresh-pack dill pickles has a recipe and a process--it calls for pre-brining in a water and salt mixture.  As I have commented more than once in the past, the quantity of food the NCHFP recipe calls for is greater than I can stuff into jars.  On the page linked above, the "7 to 9 pints" recipe starts with 8 pounds of cucumbers.  So doubling that would lead to 16 pounds for 7 to 9 quarts.  I actually used 11 pounds for 8 quarts and my jars were packed.

.

I did not pre-brine my cucumbers.  Some canning recipes, like Ball's numerous versions, skip the brining step. I also increased the vinegar a bit; I don't want to use less than a 50/50 mix of vinegar and water.  This effectively yields a solution that is 2.5% acetic acid (the NCHFP recipe would yield a 2.1% concentration). An article written long ago tested botulism growth on whole-cucumber pickles and found that acetic acid concentrations of 0.9% or greater prevented spore growth and toxin formation (Keith Ito, et al.  "Effect of acid and salt concentration in fresh-pack pickles on the growth of Clostridium botulinum spores." Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 1976; 32(1):121-124).  They tested salt concentrations of 0%, 4%, and 8%, but also pre-brined and blanched the cucumbers.

I quartered most of the cucumbers, but further cut some in half--these can be seen in the photo above.  The small pieces I laid on top of the whole cucumbers, which were packed into the jars standing on end.  Unlike with the bread and butter pickles, jar-packing went fast--very fast.  Each jar only took a couple of minutes.  I also tried putting oak leaves (seen above in the bowl on the right) into some of the jars to see if they really help the pickles be crisper, as some sites allege.

As the pictures above and below show, my jars were packed about as tightly as possible. Even after processing, they're still full of cucumber with little empty space.  Increasing the cucumbers by 45% wouldn't be possible.

Refurbishing the Well

As I noted in June, I had issues with the well.  There was a lot of sediment and testing showed that it was contaminated with bacteria.  The casing seemed to be allowing runoff water to penetrate the well bore, which would account for both the sedimentation and bacteria.  Ground water filtered by soil is suitable for drinking; rain puddles are generally not.

The well company came out to do the sealing and backfilling.  The floor of the hole below was covered with cement, then bentonite, further limiting water penetration immediately adjacent to the well casing.

The outcome of the work seems hopeful at this point: the water is looking decent, although there haven't been any heavy downpours since the job was done.  I did a follow-up qualitative bacterial test (the quantitative one from UGA costs over forty dollars, so I'm satisfied with qualitative for the moment).

 I used one of the Industrial Test Systems coliform tests.  The culture medium, when dissolved in the sample, makes it look like a urine test.  If no coliform bacteria are present, that's how it will stay.

 If, on the other hand, coliform bacteria are present, it will turn blue-green.  Above is how the sample looked at 24 hours, sitting on the kitchen counter at about 79-80 degrees.

 Later, it became pretty obvious.  The label further notes that in the presence of
Escherichia coli, aka E. coli, the sample will fluoresce blue when an ultraviolet (365 nm) light is shone through it.

It looked pretty fluorescent and blue to me; E. coli it was.  So this was disappointing but not necessarily unexpected.  I did shock the well with chlorine bleach in June after the first test, but there had been rain since then that had silted everything up--so a new influx of bacteria-contaminated water was almost expected.  Alas.

I also got new measurements on the well (24 inches in diameter, about 16 feet of water at the bottom, equaling roughly 375 gallons; see: this calculator...basically, the volume in cubic inches or feet can be estimated using pi x r squared x height, then divided by 231 cubic inches or 0.1337cubic feet per gallon [7.48 gallons per cubic foot]).

UGA and other sites recommend adding enough bleach to get to about 200 ppm of free chlorine; I used 6% bleach so adjusted my amount accordingly and added about 1.5 gallons, diluted with water before pouring it in so I wouldn't risk damaging pump wiring or anything else).  See also this guide from Canada.

I then ran the bleachy water through the whole system, into the pressure tank, water heater, and out every fixture in the house (of which there are not many--kitchen and bathroom sinks, toilet, tub/shower).  I returned the next day and started pulling chlorinated water out of the well.  UGA and everyone else recommends, "Rid the system of the remaining chlorine by turning on outside faucets, one at a time, and letting them run until you no longer smell chlorine."  That's easier said than done.  There's some concern about dumping heavily-chlorinated water on plants and in my case, we're talking 375 gallons (although some at the bottom is inaccessible because it's below the level of the pump).

So far, I haven't seen any indication of plant trouble, but I have only poured water on grass.  Mostly I have run it into a stock tank for 24 hours to let the chlorine dissipate, then poured it out.

So the well seems to be fixed. I've also flushed out a lot of sediment from the pressure tank and water heater that got in there before the reno; hopefully all I'll have to deal with now is a little sand here and there.  The purple vial above is the coliform culture from the First Alert water testing kit (ITS also sells one that looks pretty similar).  It started off and remained purple; it turns yellow in the presence of coliforms.  That's mildly encouraging.  While I wouldn't expect any bacteria in the well at this point, I drew the sample from the kitchen faucet, so it shows I successfully got chlorine throughout the system.  Now it should stay negative.  A subsequent follow-up was still negative, which was more encouraging.  Now there are just the lingering silt issues...below is what's coming out of the tap after passing through a one micron nominal filter.

Ants

There are all kinds of ants in north Georgia.  The most notorious are fire ants, but Argentine, pavement, odorous house, carpenter, and other types are also here.  We don't have ghost ants, thankfully.  We also do not have crazy ants.

I've long had issues with both fire and non-fire ants.  Fire ants first.

Fire ants are constantly an issue, because even if a colony is eradicated, new colonies form all of the time.  I've had the best luck with bait treatments, but baiting is iffy.  The problem is that the bait usually has an oil base of some sort, and if it isn't fresh, the ants won't take it.  Amdro is readily available and works well--when it's fresh (there are several Amdro products, but I'm referring to just the baseline type that has hydramethylnon as the active ingredient).

Non-fire ants (everything else):  Most other ants seem to go for sweet foods, although some switch between sweet and protein.  For sweet-feeding ants, I've had the best luck baiting them.  A number of companies make gel baits with a variety of slow-acting pesticides.  My favorites are Optigard and Advion.  The picture shows ants eating Advion on the exterior brick wall of my house.   They readily take it--I have never seen them refuse it, even when the bait is a couple of years old--and haul it back to the nest.  Usually a treatment or two takes care of them, or at least knocks their numbers down a lot.  Optigard usually only seems to be appealing to them the day I put it down, while Advion still gets feeding activity the next day.  I put a series of small amounts like those shown above on a trail and let them go to it.  Ideally, I locate the bait near where they're entering a nest.  There are other sweet baits; Terro is one that uses boric acid as the active ingredient.  You can also make your own boric acid/sugar/water mixture; boric acid is often sold in powder form as roach killer.  Dusted along baseboards indoors it will work on both roaches and ants.  It can also be mixed with sugar water 1 tsp per cup--or with peanut butter for fat-seeking ants.  SFGate has recipes and recommendations.  Terro has little glossy-finished cards to put the bait on; you can make your own from a similarly-constructed retail packaging box or, for indoor or outdoor use, Do-It-Yourself Pest Control has inexpensive stations to hold liquid or granular bait.

Problem ants (rare):  I sometimes have ants that don't seem to be interested in either Amdro or sweet baits; for them the only obvious solution is a non-ingested pesticide.  Orthene powder works well but it's pretty toxic.  It will work on fire ants, too--dust around and over the top of the mound and ants will track it into the nest, killing it--but that leaves it laying in the yard.  A liquid solution, like Termidor or a generic equivalent, will also work and seems less hazardous to birds and other non-targeted animals.
 

Sweet Pickles 2018, and Re-Learning Canning Lessons

I'm not growing cucumbers this year, but I still did some sweet pickles.  Unlike in the past, the cucumbers I got were pickling size, rather than the sometimes very large ones I harvested out of my garden (I still would prefer home-grown...maybe next year).  At any rate, sweet aka bread-and-butter pickles are mostly easy.  I have used Mrs. Wages mix in the past, but more recently have started making my own mix following the Pickyourown.org and NCHFP sites, as noted before.  Also as noted previously: I don't do the salt-and-refrigerate thing; it's unnecessary.  My standard recipe is, for about 8 quarts:

8.5 lb. cucumbers
2 large onions

3 tbsp canning salt (based on Mrs. Winner’s mix)

8 c vinegar

9 c sugar

4 tbsp mustard seed

3 tbsp celery seed

2 tbsp turmeric

This time around, I had about that much in cucumbers and ended up with 8 quarts, 1 pint (my canner holds 8 quarts, so I had to do two runs, alas).  So in comparison to the last time I wrote about this, I got a little less packed into each jar.

Packing cucumber slices is tough, and it takes me a long time.  As I have noted on a number of occasions before, I have no idea how these canning recipes can contemplate stuffing so much into each jar.  According to the NCHFP site, I should've been able to get over 50% more cucumber into each jar.  It just can't be done, as far as I can see.

The brine mix is pretty sinus-clearing and eye-burning as it heats up.  I mix everything together and let it start to simmer while I'm cutting cucumbers.  As I have noted elsewhere, I have gotten better and more efficient at canning.  One obvious efficiency is to start the dishwasher while getting everything ready to go into the canner--I always run my jars through a cycle before canning, both to clean them and heat them.

So I did that this time.  That being said, I didn't get it quite right and was done slicing cucumbers about 20-30 minutes before the dishwasher was done. Once it finished its cycle, packing the jars was slow, as noted above.  It took me about an hour to fill the 9 jars (quarts and pint).

That's s l o w.

Partly I think I have forgotten what worked well in the past.  As a glance at the 2015 picture shows, the jars were pretty decently-packed.  Cucumbers have a lot of air in them, and will shrink in the jars as they're heated--there's no getting around that with raw pack.  But this time around, despite having smaller/easier cucumbers to work with and taking a long time, I did not (at a minimum) improve on 2015's performance.  I may even have regressed a little, judging by weight per jar.

I both can a lot and don't can much.  I usually only do one batch of anything per year, although I did a couple runs of applesauce last year and I've done multiple batches of preserves some years.  I've done multiple runs of apricots.  But there's a long enough gap in between for me to forget a few things.  Sigh.  It's simultaneously familiar and new each time I do it, I suppose.

The pickles did (or will) turn out great.  The only time I've screwed up a batch is when I used 1/2 cup of salt as called for in the other recipes, but without rinsing it off before canning.  Those were still edible, but definitely weren't all that good.

More on White Sonora

My little cache of White Sonora wheat is almost gone so I decided to try a loaf of 100% (though I did add half a cup of vital wheat gluten).  The results weren't tremendously impressive, but not bad.

I certainly have had better and worse.  The floury seam in the middle is where I folded the dough over before putting it in the proofing basket.

The loaf is pretty dense, typical of whole wheat, and definitely has that texture.  The dough might have been a touch under-hydrated, but as it is, it's definitely usable.

As I have noted before (actually more than once) I often seem to get better results in the winter.  This time around I let the dough rise for about 10 hours before baking.

Actually, I probably shouldn't be too hard on the result: I usually don't get a whole wheat loaf to break along the top.  A rounded, smooth dome top is more typical (then again, there are occasional home runs [at least in winter]).