A pickle jar totem- now that's unique. The materials are right there in your own kitchen, would have been thrown away otherwise and look what you did with them and a little imagination. I love it. Hard to see the details but whatever is inside them and the little glass balls around the rims are cool, really adds interest. I like the way it looks by the bottle tree the best, with all the other colored glass.

Oh, I checked on my tree every month or so, in the cold cellar, giving it about a cup of water a month. I ate lots of fig tarts, and pies. .... made my own with honey.....I gotta have my honey every day. LOL Waited until April and started taking it out on sunny days. This year, I do believe I will start some cuttings. I only have so much room though, as I am really "into" raising brugmansia and also dahlia plants.

Using recycled jars for canning... I have been using recycled glass jars and their lids for several years, at least 10. I am from Western Pennsylvania and I routinely visit our recycling center getting regular canning jars but also pickle jars, salsa jars and whatever jar that I think would be good and convenient for my canning needs. As long as the jars are fully sound, ie, not cracked or chipped and their lids are also in like-new condition, I use them repeatedly with NO undesirable results...with one caveat...I don't use nut butter lids for canning as they are not coated with plastisol or other canner lid sealer. I routinely pressure can as well as hot water bath can. A side benefit from using free recycled jars is that I frequently give my canned products away and never worry about getting a jar in return. New, replacement lug lids are readily available on line, via Amazon, Berlin Packaging, Nakpunar and many other places...just do a search for lug lids. Each lid is measured at the top of each jar, ie, 82mm, 70 mm, etc. Two types of lids...one with the vacuum button and one without the button...either one is good and I have no problem using either type...but I only get the lids that have that acid resistant sealant on the underneath of each lid, called plastisole or something like that. In use, the lug lids require a bit more muscle tightening (not much more) and should be in a warm to hot water bath prior to actual use. About using recycle jars and lids...I remove any label on each jar and any of the adhesive from any label. This is a process in its own, but I have mastered it. Then, I BLEACH wash in hot water, wearing rubber gloves, all the jars and lids. After fully dried, the jars and lids are closed boxed, taped shut and labeled as to what is inside and stored away until needed. Some jars use water-soluble adhesive for their labels while other do not. The water soluble labels/adhesive is easy to remove, while all the other adhesives are not as easy and require special solvents to remove the adhesives...I use gasoline, outside in open air, using rubber gloves on the jars after scrapping off the labels as best that I can. This is really no big deal, but I am sure others would not like this methodology. I leave the jars to sit in the sun until 'dried' and then they get bleach washed, as described.

I've never canned fridge pickles? Thought that was part of the point was that you don't do the canning. But anywho, I dug through my notes. I was processing so much at that time, heh. Turns out this was the lacto-fermented batch, not a straight up fridge pickle batch. So the previous note about how I processed them is wrong, that was a different something, lol. So what I did was at the end of the canning night- I water bath pickled a few jars of green cherry tomatoes, and was pretty wiped out to do another batch.I brought the jars up to a brief boil while I prepped up the tomatoes. Pulled jars out of hot water,. into each jar went 2t mustard seed, 1t peppercorns, 1t dill seed , 1/2t hot pepper flake, 1 bay leaf, and a couple small whole fresh garlic cloves. Brine was 10 cups water, and 50 grams of salt, I used 30 grams of canning salt, and 20 grams of large flake sea salt. Brought briefly up to a boil and salt added in, then cooled down to room temp before pouring over the tomatoes. Weights went into the top of the jars, then the jars got capped with clean coffee filters bonnets. Sat on the counter for 4 days or so till they stopped bubbling. Then they got their solid cap and ring, and went into the back of the fridge. This was in October.