Hello
I pickled my first batches of cucumbers, and they worked OK. One jar of sliced cucumbers and one of whole cucumbers. We're not generally-speaking pickle eaters, but in the face of a bumper crop, could only face so many salads! So, as far as the taste-test goes, they seemed OK, looked OK and smelled OK.
After I had had them in the fridge for a while I checked and found a bit of white mould growing on the vine leaves I was using as a topper to keep them under the brine.
Being over confident by this stage, I replaced the leaves with some freshly picked vine leaves without washing them first. It had been raining, so I figured they were clean.
Afterwards I worried that I may have introduced bad bacteria (bird droppings, etc.) into the batch which was now in the fridge, so no longer actively fermenting.
If I have done a bad thing, would I be able to tell by smelling them after a while, or would it be best to just cut my losses and try again next year?
Cheers,
Retta