National Pickling gherkin; this name sounds rather grand to me. I’m not sure which nation they represent, but they were a lucky selection for our garden as they have yielded well and are different enough from salad cucumbers to be a separate crop for the kitchen.
I planted two types of cucumber this year; a salad type and a pickling one, to hedge my bets.
The first picking of the gherkins was a bit of a worry to me, as they were not only insipid but also bitter. Fortunately the following fruit were fine, and apparently bitter early fruit is a standard issue. I had wondered what the difference between a picking cucumber and a salad cucumber would be, besides size, and the answer was clear. The fresh young picking cucumbers taste a bit flat, but when you put them away with vinegar they are transformed and the become tasty. Even the skin seems right for pickling in a way that salad cucumber skin isn’t.
Of course these became a glut, as is the way with cucumbers, and besides there are always stealth fruit that I don’t find until they are fully ripe, but I discovered that the ripe ones are actually fine as salad cucumbers too (they get quite large).
It’s also easy to make them into fine pickles. Recipes I’ve tried range from just cold vinegar, a little water, and mustard seeds, to boiled vinegar and water, mustard, coriander seed, and dill leaves, in various combinations. For all the pickles I first draw out the cucumber slices with salt, overnight or for a few hours.
As has been the way this trial season, I first planted some as seedlings near the chicken coop (in the Three Sisters bed), then sowed direct in a bed at the Mid-levels which had irrigation. The Mid-levels bed did best, although all the cucumbers suffered in the relentlessly wet weather, with fungal disease on the leaves. They make a quick comeback though in the dry spells, and keep on fruiting.
Lessons for next season: sow a few early in the greenhouse to transplant, then sow direct (as well) a month later, and have a fence or trellis made ready – they do much better off the ground and it’s so much easier to find the fruit.