Pickling lime is used to help keep the vinegar from breaking the cells of the cukes down. You should only store the cukes a maximum of 48 hours in a lime/water soak in the fridge. I found that if I just wash the cukes, drain slighly, and then store in a big plastic bag (open) in the fridge vegetable crisper drawer, it will help keep enough moisture inside as the bag sweats some. In my case, they only get stored for a max of about 3-4 days. I have stored almost a whole batch worth right now, but will not get to them until after tomorrow night, when I pick a few more. My plan is to make another batch of mustard pickles as my last batch flavor was really good. I used a combination of vinegars, as well as mustard seeds both yellow and brown. Its slightly sweet as a salad mustard should be. With cucumber chunks, and pickle crisp, you should be just fine. If you just need a couple of more cukes, you can also buy a couple at your local supermarket. These are in season right now, so you should have some decent ones. In the future, if you have enough space, plant a few more cuke plants. I have about 40 here and they are on a 4 foot tall trellis. I set it up so I can see all the cukes from one side of the trellis. They get well watered every day as they need plenty of water. Without it, they don't usually develop their nice length. Also, check to see if you missed a big old cuke (like a small watermelon), as these tend to stop more cukes from forming and growing. As an added option, you can also pickle cauliflower, sweet red peppers, and small onions in the same batch and call it a sweet mixed pickle, so there you would use less cukes.

Thanks Ken :)

Yeah I had plenty of plants but with the heat the pollinators are in hiding so even though I have plenty of female blooms (and have been trying to hand-pollinate using several different techniques) I'm just not getting the cukes.

Then again maybe I'm being too impatient too. [grins]

Mine are all up on the front porch in containers. I screwed a cup hook into the ceiling of the porch about 8 feet over each one and then drilled a hole in each corner of the square plastic containers. I then ran some jute through one hole, looped it up and over the cup hook and back down to a hole on the opposite side of the pot and tied it off. Repeated for the other two holes and had an 8 foot string "teepee" for them to climb. Since they're inderterminate though, they climed to the ceiling and turned around :)

I also tried pinching off the top of the cucumber vine to get it to branch out rather than climb. It worked, they branched out alright, right under the place where I pinched the vine off and kept right on climbing LOL! So I decided to quit that for fear of introducing disease through the wound.

Thanks again for the info on lime. I'll just take what I can get and use Pickle Crisp instead. :)

Best Wishes
Amino-X

Here, a few of my cuke plants are just loaded with hundreds of flowers. I see that the bees have a tough time getting down into the bottom of that blossom as you can almost see their whole body going into the middle. Because I planted several pickling types, I have quite a lot of cukes. I have never grown them in pots, only in the soil and have 4 foot tall wire trellises that support them. Once they are at the tops, I tuck them to the sides and back down again. Generally, I can get a nice narrow row only about 2-3 feet wide and most all the foliage is on the opposite side from where I pick from. Every 3 days I usually have enough to make a decent batch of pickles, and give it 5 days and that can double. Last night, I made 12 jars of mustard pickles, some spicy mini dills, and some regular dills. Next will be another round of sweet dills with a bit of celery seeds added (like what they put on burgers). Soon, they will be getting too cool to survive. I do know that this year, because of downy mildew, I usually lose most of my plants by now, but because I sprayed all the foliage with Serenade Solutions (special hormone- Halperin), it has made the plants much tougher and more resisant to diseases. The cucumber beetles were the next nasty pest, so I have these two yellow sticky traps at each end, with sex lures inside. They have been able to catch many of the striped cucumber beetles, which also carry the mildew.