Pickling peppers and cucumbers

The sharp smell of white vinegar fills my kitchen as I prepped the hungarian yellow peppers and cucumbers for their briny baths.  

3 small 'bush pickle' cucumber plants with cardboard-stiff 5" leaves produced 10 pints of dill pickles in the first harvest- 3 pints packed with the salty sweet broth of the peppers. These pickles, all packed with a head of dill from the garden and most with a bay leaf, rosemary sprig, mustard and black pepper seed, will need to age for 6 weeks before eating.

A flat of hungarian yellow peppers (36 starts) cost $22 from the nursery this spring and produced a dramatic display of peppers-- stubborn to refute gravity and the poor soil. I brined them for 24 hrs and then pickled a dozen pints in vinegar, garlic, and sugar. No rest period for these; they're damn tasty. hot, too. And at least another harvest before the first frost.