Cucumbers Gone Wild!

 

This sprawl of vines yielded over 30 pounds of pickling cucumber in August and September last year. I planted four cucumber plant in a 2x3' bed between my garage and the alley. It faces south so the sun exposure is fantastic. 

I knew that warm weather veggies do better if you wait until the warm weather stabilizes. I did not start seeds until early May and I planted them out in mid-June. I dug down about 14-16" to increase the rooting volume of the bed and incorporated some wood shaving mulch that was over abundant in the yard. When I got the bed halfway filled, I went into our pantry to see what sources of nitrogen we had. I found some old lentils, a long-expired can of dog food and  some millet of unknown vintage. I incorporated these into layers as I added back the soil to the bed. The thing to note here is that the wood shaving meant that soil could could handle lots of nitrogen, because the high carbon content would tie up the nitrogen temporarily as the soil bacteria kicked in to gear. There was not risk of too much nitrogen.

Once the bed was planted I put drip irrigation on it. I ran the irrigation most days during hot weather. 


The crop started kicking in at the beginning of August. It peaked about the third week of August. One day I put up 5 pounds of cukes to ferment into pickles.


This coming year, I am expanding to include the bed to the east. 

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