Out With The Cukes
September 1st, 2008 · 1 Comment · Posted in Uncategorized
Today was time to say goodbye to our cucumber plants. They’ve been great producers, making hundreds of pickles. Pulling them out of the ground isn’t easy after watching them daily since they were first planted on May 25. I gather one last bowl of cukes. You can see how the plants as they age begin making cucumbers of unusual shape and color.
This is what they looked like, on the right, only a couple of weeks ago. We planted two varieties of pickling cucumbers, Cross Country and Rhinish. They eagerly climbed a trellis made by hanging string from PVC pipe. Filling out the bed were several Italian zucchini plants and, at the far end, two Tuscan kales.
This is the same bed this morning, after the cucumbers were torn from the trellis and the squash plants pulled from the ground. It’s time to get this area ready for a new crop. We want to try a second planting of potatoes. Potatoes are normally planted around St. Patrick’s Day, but we have some seed potatoes from our farmer friend Mike, who thinks at a minimum we should be able to harvest a nice batch of “new” potatoes before the first hard frost.
The cucumber plants, meanwhile, were carried to the compost heap and chopped into smaller pieces. Their destiny now is to feed next year’s crops. They have our thanks.
I’ve been meaning to pull up my cucumbers this past week. I want to plant more kale there, but contemplate a summer squash variety if the weather can hold…needless to say, the cucs have gone untouched.