Cucumbers!

Cucumbers!

Refreshing. Crunchy.

Typically eaten raw or pickled.

The last few years we had problems with our cucumbers after the first harvest. We would get lots of cucumbers and then the plant would look sad then wither and die.

I thought it was disease. It turns out I may have been the cause of the plant dying.

It’s goal as a plant is to grow, produce successful offspring, and die, giving the soil for it’s offspring the nutrients it collected in its lifetime.

When we pick the cucumbers we disrupt the plants cycle. We steal the offspring. Same with beans, same with tomatoes, same with lots of plants.

I didn’t pick ENOUGH of the cucumbers.

I should have picked the icky ones on the ground because the plant knew that even if I didn’t want to eat it, the seed was successful.

Wither. Die.

So instead of weeding I’ll be making sure to get all the veggies off their parent vine so we can enjoy a longer crop.

Did you know that picking keeps the plant alive longer?

There are hundreds of varieties of cucumbers. For our plant sale we narrowed the selection down to two good ones.

One slicer (bigger and good for salads) and one pickling size (smaller and good for… pickling!)

This year we added Cucamelon, also known as Mexican Sour Gherkins. I’ve never grown them before but we’ve picked them in other gardens. They are the size of an oval cherry tomato and taste like a cucumber. If you grow these be sure to keep them picked!

You can check out all of our varieties in our Growing Guide -a 50 page PDF available via email -> sign up on main page.