What I’m preserving in July (and why): Pickles, salsa and the first tomato rush
July is when preserving season stops being a pleasant little hobby and starts quietly taking over the house.
At the beginning of summer, I always feel wonderfully organised. I have jars. I have lids. I have vinegar, lemon juice and a carefully considered list of everything I intend to preserve.
Then the garden starts producing.
Suddenly there are cucumbers in the fridge, tomatoes ripening on every available surface and a canner permanently stationed outside. Every time I walk through the garden, something else appears to be ready.
And this is still only July.
The real tomato avalanche has not even started yet.
(If you want to check out what I preserved in May
Or if you want to see how I prepare for the canning season)
First came the French gherkins
I planted six French pickling cucumber plants this year.
My original goal was to make around 25 half-pint jars of pickles, enough to last us through the year without turning cucumber harvesting into a full-time occupation.
A sensible plan.
I have now made approximately 40 half-pints.
So much for sensible.
The plants have been extraordinarily productive, and for several weeks I seemed to be harvesting another bowl of cucumbers every time I went outside.
Pickling cucumbers are also not especially patient vegetables. Tomatoes can sit on the kitchen counter for a few days. Pumpkins can wait for months. Gherkins seem to expect immediate attention.
Leave them for slightly too long and they go from perfect little pickles to cucumber submarines almost overnight.
Most have gone into jars as traditional pickles, but the oversized ones have been used like ordinary cucumbers—in salads, sandwiches and anything else that benefits from something fresh and crunchy.
I am now well beyond my original pickle target, which means I can finally begin removing the tired plants without feeling that I somehow failed to preserve enough.
Forty jars should do it... Probably.
The first batch of salsa
This week, the first proper tomato harvest became seven half-pint jars of salsa.
There is something deeply satisfying about salsa because so much of it can come directly from the garden: tomatoes, peppers, onions and herbs, all chopped together and transformed into something we will actually use throughout the year.
I used a tested water-bath canning recipe and followed its ingredient proportions, acidification instructions, jar size and processing time.
That is particularly important with salsa. It is tempting to treat it like ordinary cooking, adding a few more peppers, reducing the vinegar or changing the proportions according to taste, but canning recipes are not the place for improvisation.
Flavour can be adjusted when the jar is opened. Safety cannot.
The seven jars are now cooling, and I have already started thinking about the next batch.
This is how preserving season works. You finish one project, admire the jars for approximately thirty seconds, and then notice another basket of produce waiting behind you.
The tomatoes are only just beginning
I have around 25 tomato plants growing this year, which seemed perfectly reasonable when they were tiny seedlings. It feels less reasonable now.
The cherry tomatoes are forming their usual jungle, the paste tomatoes are beginning to ripen, and the larger slicing varieties are finally changing colour.
At the moment, the harvest is still manageable. We are eating tomatoes fresh, adding them to salads and collecting enough every few days for smaller kitchen projects.
But I know what is coming.
Soon there will be too many tomatoes to eat fresh, and preserving will move from occasional batches to a proper production schedule.
My main tomato plans include:
Salsa
Italian-style passata
Pizza sauce
Tomato sauce
Tomato paste
Soup and ready-meal bases
Freezing whole tomatoes when I do not have time to process them immediately
Freezing whole tomatoes has become one of my favourite emergency strategies. When the garden produces more than I can deal with, the tomatoes go straight into the freezer.
They can then be processed later, when I have enough for a full batch or when I have recovered the will to look at another tomato.
The tomatillos are waiting in the wings
The tomatillo plants are also loaded.
Tomatillos are wonderfully strange plants. They produce dozens of little paper lanterns, and for a long time it looks as though something exciting is happening without there being much inside them.
Then, almost suddenly, the fruit begins filling the husks.
My main plan for those is salsa verde.
I love the bright, sharp flavour of tomatillos, and salsa verde will add something completely different to the pantry. There are only so many jars of red tomato sauce two people can reasonably pretend are exciting.
The tomatillos are not quite ready for a full batch yet, but their moment is coming.
Possibly at exactly the same time as the main tomato harvest, because gardens enjoy coordination almost as much as cats do.
What is already filling the pantry?
So far, July has mainly been about:
French gherkin pickles
The first tomato salsa
Early tomato harvests
Planning for salsa verde
Preparing for the main tomato-processing season
This is the stage of summer when the pantry begins changing from a collection of empty jars and good intentions into actual food.
Each finished batch represents future meals: pickles with sandwiches, salsa for tacos, passata for pasta, pizza sauce for quick dinners and jars that can be opened when the garden is sleeping.
That is really why I preserve food.
It is not about creating a picturesque wall of matching jars—although I admit that is satisfying.
It is about making the abundance of one season useful in another.
July preserving still has a certain sense of optimism about it.
The batches are relatively small. The first tomatoes are exciting. I still feel pleased when I hear jar lids sealing.
By late August, the atmosphere may be slightly different.
There will probably be tomatoes everywhere. The kitchen will smell permanently of vinegar. Every clean surface will contain either vegetables, jars or vegetables waiting to go into jars.
At some point, I will almost certainly question why I planted so much.
Then January will arrive, I will open a jar of summer salsa, and the entire thing will seem like an excellent idea again.
For now, though, July is giving me pickles, salsa and the first taste of the tomato season.
The pantry is filling. The canner is busy.
And the tomato avalanche has barely started.
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