Ingredients for pickling: peppers tomatoes, collards, cherry leaves, dill seed, rosemary. After trimming I’ll weigh it to see how much salt to use, then pack it into the jar.
Cherry leaves add a little bit of tannins that keep things crispy.
The loaded pickling jar. It has a “well” around the lid to keep the carbon dioxide in as it ferments. Once it gets to a certain point it starts “blooping”. I just have to keep some water in the moat to maintain the air lock.
It just blooped! It's alive already!
It's kinda like having a pet... I don't have to feed it but I do need to be sure it has water (in the moat) and keep it out of direct sunlight.
At this time of year it might only need a week on the counter before I put it in jars to refrigerate. In the middle of winter it might be two weeks. Whenever the blooping rate goes up and then comes down again, that's time.
