Recipe: Zucchini pickles

It's the age-old question: what do I do with all this zucchini? The stuff practically plants itself, and there's always one or two (or five) of the shiny green squash on the plant, ready to pick. In my family, several of us don't like the texture of cooked zucchini, so for years I've been making lots of zucchini bread (I'll post that recipe too) and trying to freeze or give away the surplus harvest.
When I discovered this recipe and decided to adapt it, I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly it gained enthusiastic support at our house. 3 simple ingredients and a few hours in the fridge and our zucchinis taste like an extra crispy blend between bread-and-butter pickles and sweet pickles. They are great on sandwiches or just for plain snacking if you like the tangy, sweet flavor - which I do!

Zucchini Pickles
1-3 zucchini*
1 cup water
1/3 cup white sugar
1/3 cup white vinegar
1-2 tsp salt
Slice zucchini into thin coins. Combine water, sugar, vinegar, and salt in a jar and mix well. Add zucchini and store in the fridge. Flavor will be best if you don't start eating for at least 3 hours.
*Tip: Harvest them before they get too big, about 6 inches, or the length of your hand. I used to wait until my zucchini resembled baseball bats until I realized they were more tender and had much smaller seeds if you get them young.

What to plant - April or May

I know, I know, it's August now. But I still wanted to go back and document what we planted in the spring. San Diego is great; we have a long summer growing season and also a nice sized winter growing season. So you can basically have a garden year round. Here are some pictures of our garden boxes from earlier in the summer:

Here we have blueberries (in the planter boxes), hollyhocks along the back, yellow squash, bell peppers, red onions, and 2 zucchini plants.

 This one has four tomato plants (yum!): Early Girl, San Diego, Champion and Sungold. The Sungold variety is a cherry/grape tomato that has done really well for us. If I had a bigger cage, I think it would grow ten feet tall!

 This box has cucumbers in the back, strawberries in front, and I'm trying to get some zinnias to grow in the middle but our chickens were digging around and kind of smashed them.

 This box is pole beans in the back (which did really well in the early summer), petunias in the front for some color, butternut squash, and cantaloupe. I draped the growing cantaloupe vines over an extra tomato cage and was pleased by the result: it uses less space and seems to shade the fruit better than if I let the vines just creep along the ground.

And here we have the kids' box. My boys planted a cornucopia of flowers, zucchini, radishes and onions in the front half and I have my second round of corn in the back half. Gotta love that corn!
So there you have it! My lovely crop of Summer 2018!