Salad-Slicer Cucumbers

MY STATUS: Unsuccessful   

What I Did

DAY 1 - SOWING

I sowed Burpee Salad-Slicer Cucumber seeds in a wide but fairly shallow pot with gravel on the bottom and regular potting soil. The soil was gathered into two large mounds and a few pairs of seeds were pushed into the soil of each mound at a depth of about 1 inch. Seeds were purchased at Pohnpei Ace Hardware a few days before planting and kept refridgerated. From the package it looks like they ship these seeds in from Walmart?? Funny.

DAY 3 - GERMINATION

I've kept my container in direct sun every since Day 1, and, boy, have we had sun! These plants seem to like it. They were among the fastest to germinate. Virtually all the seeds I planted came up.

DAY 6 - THINNING

Seedlings were thinned to two per mound, so that I have a total of four plants in one container. They are about 1 inch tall and look healthy, already with their first true leaves. I will put in a scaffolding of bailing wire soon before the plants get much bigger. Cucumber plants aren't self-supporting and will fall over once they have some size unless you put a cage or some other support around them.

DAY 18

I have to say that I am loving these plants! First, they are incredibly rapid growers. Secondly, I am fascinated by a particular feature of the plant's physiology--the clinging tendrils. These things are amazing! They're like prehensile monkey tails. They grow out from the stem and search for anything to latch onto and then wrap themselves tightly around it like a boa constrictor. I used heavy wire about a week ago to create a trio of simple hoops over the plants. The tendrils grabbed onto the wires in an couple of hours. The plants are now well-supported. As they get taller, I'll add some larger hoops and then run some twine up to the roof of my garden shelter so they can climb as high as they like. Everything seems great in the shelter where these guys live. They are loving all the sun we've been having for about two weeks. I have had to water more frequently because of the heat, watering deeply so that the soil at the surface stays moist.

DAY 22

I continue to find my cucumber plants charming. The way the little tendrils reach out and twist around stuff is so cool! I just added another trio of larger wire hoops to accommodate the height of the plants Also, today I found a new plant that had just germinated three weeks after the others. Odd.

DAY 27 - FLOWERING

These plants' growth has been off the charts. I had to add more wire supports a few days ago and then a network of twine going to the ceiling so they'd have something to hold onto as they climbed. They are now all the way to the 5-foot roof and starting to grow horizontally along the top. Today beautiful yellow flowers opened all over the plants. Hopefully cucumbers will be developing fairly soon!

DAY 32 - CUCUMBERS!

Six days after flowers first opened on the cucumber plants, I have my first developing cucumbers. They're about a half-inch long. Super cute. There are quite a few of them and the plants show no signs of slowing down. Having reached the vertical limit of the garden structure, they continued out the space on the side and have grown another foot in two days. All I can say is--cucumbers rock! You can tell that my variety is the pickling type. They look like miniature dill pickles. Love it.

DAY 45 - FIRST CUCUMBER

A month and a half after sowing, I have my first cuc. What a cutie. It's a perfect three-inch long pickler. What actually surprised me was how fast it grew from a baby to picking size. Pretty cool. What's not cool is how many babies I lost to this heat wave. Despite watering sometimes twice daily, the intense heat has withered any cucs that weren't shaded by the plant's leaves. Grrr. On the bright side, the plants show no signs of slowing down, so there should be more where this first one came from. Time to throw some chicken manure on there and feed these guys. In my second batch I'll probably see if I can rig up some shade cloth over these guys. Full Pohnpei sun might not be necessary.

DAY 53 - APHIDS

I wasn't sure if aphids were found on Pohnpei. Now I know they're here. The cucumbers have quickly developed a sizable infestation. What tipped me off were the large numbers of ants crawling around on the plants (ants farm aphids and protect them from predators) and the presence of a sticky substance on the leaves that grew a blackish mold. The sticky stuff is called honeydew, and it is secreted by the aphids. Mold, in turn, grows on the honeydew. Now, the strange thing is that the aphid infestation doesn't seem to be adversely affecting the plants much. They are still producing cucumbers. I should get a nice batch before I pull these guys up and replant. I think I may try planting them in the open next time, where the rain will fall on them. They seem to love water (one long section of the plant has grown out of the shelter along the top of the roof and is completely exposed to rain, and yet this strand has produced the most cucumbers), and the aphids would be washed off by regular deluges. I've also noticed that the aphids haven't spread to any other species of plant, even though they are in close proximity to everything in the garden shelter. It seems the aphids don't like tomatoes or all the herbs I have (yet).

DAY 61 - TERMINATION

I decided to take an axe to the cucumber plants today (metaphorically). Though they have been productive, there were several issues and I can't chalk them up to a win:

1. The aphid infestation was becoming problematic and I was afraid the beasts would travel from the cucumbers to other plants in my garden. They were also causing the growth of mold which had spread from infected leaves to parts of the shelter they were touching. Again, I didn't want mold on any other plants.
2. The extremely hot weather has not been good for the cucumbers, stressing the plants and making the fruit bitter. These guys need more shade the next time around and less blazing hot days. One type of weather benefits a particular plant (like the tomatoes), while stressing another (cucumbers). These plants grew fast, so I'm not too broken up over their destruction. I'll find a new location to plant with partial shade and probably also wait for a shift in the weather.

3. Though the plants seemed not to mind being in a fairly small container, watering was an issue. They are thirsty plants, cucumbers, and the soil in my pot was drying out too quickly in this heat. If I forgot to water right on schedule, the plants wilted in the sun. I'm thinking pig feed bags for these guys on the second run, since they've worked so well with the tomatoes.

ATTEMPT 2 / DAY 1 - SOWING (12/23)

I sowed my cucumber seeds much in the same way as the first time, except that this time they were planted in a large, deep pig feed bags with about three times as much soil and depth. The soil was gathered into a single mound and a few pairs of seeds were pushed into the soil at a depth of about 1 inch. The seed variety sowed this time are a little different than before. I used a type ideal for pickling. As the weather has cooled down considerably since the early fall with many more overcast days, I'm hoping I'll have more success and my cucumbers won't go bitter.