Preserves: Pickled Swiss Chard Stems

This is my first year growing Swiss Chard, and so far so good! I harvest 1 1/2 lbs yesterday! 

Plus I've harvested for dinner here and there. 

But yesterday was different! The bed was looking full, and I wanted to preserve some for a later use.

After a quick search, I learned how to process and freeze the leaves. 

But I didn't want the stems to go to waste, which led to another search.

Which led to the idea of Pickled Swiss Chard Stems.

We like pickles, so why not?

As far as recipes I found, I didn't have all the ingredients and didn't want to run out to buy ingredients when I had ingredients for a tried and true recipe. Most of the recipes I found called for sugar, so that's what I went with too, a sweet pickle not a garlic one.

Here's the recipe I used:

8 cups water

1 cup vinegar

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup salt

Garlic and Dill to taste ( I omitted the dill, and put a tiny clove in the bottom of the jar)

Pack jar with chard stems, garlic and dill ( if you want it). Boil rest of ingredients or 5 minutes.

Pour into jar. Store in fridge.

What do you think? Have I fallen over the deep end? 

Swiss Chard Stem Pickles? I love green bean pickles, so I thought why not...