Cucumber Wars

[altivo]

Attack of the cucumbers! I like cucumbers, and last year my little garden produced very few. So this year I planted more. Oops! One week's worth, more to come.

Comments

[theradicalchild]

Hmm, the image seems broken. Though technically fruits, they're definitely one veggie I can tolerate, but then again, my dietary habits have changed during the last decade.

[altivo]

Fixed now. Dreamwidth doesn't seem to be accepting the URL from Flickr, had to upload it directly here.

[theradicalchild]

Yeah, I've had issues with Dreamwidth and images myself. Good haul.

[hrrunka]

Your cucumbers are doing well. We've not had anything from any of our squash-type plants yet this year. Last year was a better year for us.

[altivo]

Yes, and I'm surprised. Last year neither tomatoes nor cukes did well. This year we have a serious drought, probably still 10 or 12 inches of rain deficit at this point. But the plants are all in raised beds or containers, so I'm watering them daily and getting good results.

[moonhare]

Those look so nice! Our cukes did poorly this year, unlike the harvest we had in 2020. Our eggplants have been most abundant, though :o)

So far we’ve canned 15 quarts of tomato sauce with more to come. So much fun!

[ranunculus]

My garden was just comming on, with LOTS of cucumbers (the Armenian cumber has a diameter of about 10 feet) squash and tomatoes. I had lots of cucumbers before I left and a few tomatoes but EVERYTHING was ripening. We will see how things are when I return on Sunday.

[altivo]

We have a drought, but as mentioned above, these plants are in containers or raised beds and I've been watering them daily since I can control the water use and not waste any. The dark green ones are a slicing cucumber called "Raider" that has done well for me almost every time I planted it. Grows up to ten inch fruit but I usually pick them at around 8 inches. The others are from two plants I picked up at the garden center. One was labeled "Delicious Pickles" and the other "Homegrown Pickles." They are indeed pickling cucumbers, maxing out at about 5 or 6 inches long but getting quite chubby if you don't pick them too quickly. Not seedless, but the seeds are soft and not a problem. And as you can see, they are producing well. It took a while, because at first all the flowers were male. The present mix is about 2/3 male flowers, and though bees are very scarce here, something is pollinating them successfully.

I love home canned tomatoes, but haven't had enough of a crop to do that with in over 20 years. When we lived on a tiny lot in Chicago, I had much higher tomato production. Probably because our yard had more sun, no big trees. Here partial sun is about the best I can get unless I put the veggies a thousand feet from the house and wells, at the far back of the property.

[deffox]

It's been a long time since I've had fresh cucumber. Used to always have them from the garden growing up.

My sister gave up on keeping the old garden going. Deer and rabbits kept wiping it out.

[altivo]

I use raised beds and containers. I still have to wrap chicken wire around to keep the deer, woodchucks, and rabbits out. Not to mention our barn cats who love to lie on top of the young plants just coming up.

The cucumbers take care of themselves once they get started well, and the chicken wire gets rolled up and put away for next year. The vines and fruit are spiny enough to keep most damaging critters away. Not so with tomatoes though. The feral chickens around here will steal small red tomatoes, like cherry tomatoes or grape tomatoes and run around carrying them in their beaks. The cats aren't interested in either tomatoes or the chickens, though. Deer would probably eat the tomatoes, but I keep chicken wire around those all through the season, held together by clips that let me remove one side to pick tomatoes and then clip it shut again. That works pretty well.

I'm not a big gardener really, but we do like fresh ripe tomatoes and green beans. The green beans are pole types, and climb a trellis, which helps limit the needed space. The cucumber varieties I pick are also trellis climbers. Raider is a prolific slicing cucumber. Tasty is a good pickling cucumber that is also a vigorous climber.

I put more gardening effort on flowers, because I really like the color they add.