Harvesting a pickling cucumber from the garden.

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Photo of Luay Ghafari

Cucumbers are the sprinters of the summer garden. One week the vines are flowering; the next, you’re harvesting faster than you can eat. They come in fast and they come in abundance. And that’s exactly what makes growing them so satisfying, as long as you have a plan for the kitchen.

Raw cucumbers are, of course, a joy in Mediterranean Salads, chopped into mezze spreads, or simply eaten straight from the vine with a pinch of flaky salt. But the gardener’s real advantage is catching them at every stage: tiny ones go straight into the brine for the best fermented cucumber pickles you’ve ever tasted; slightly larger ones get sliced into salads; the big ones that got away can still be roasted, puréed into cold soups, or used in sauces.

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Pickled and Fermented Cucumbers

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