TheLorax
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Cucumbers

Yup, I bought a 12 pack. Must have been having an out of body experience when I did that from what I've read on the internet about their sprawling growth habit. Went away for about a week and came back and found that they hadn't been watered. About a third of them are looking so-so but you can tell they've definitely seen better days, another third is looking so bad I wonder if there's even any chance they could rebound, and the other third is looking sooooo bad I'm convinced they're dead or darn near dead.

I don't know which cucumbers I bought. The name was mostly rubbed off the tag but I can see the smudged word cukes and what I think looks like the number 8 followed by the letters th. Anyone have any idea what variety of cucumber I purchased? I could have sworn the woman who sold them to me stated they were an heirloom but I can't read the stakes any more. Just curious.

I have two 14 inch planters. Ok to try planting 2 cucumbers in each of them? I've basically got 4 cukes left that might have a chance of surviving. Do I need to do anything special for them? Whatever I'm going to do, I need to do it fast because I'm leaving again for a bit. They'll be safer in the planters where at least somebody here might spot them to water them rather then sitting around in their little black plastic coffins where they are easily overlooked.

cynthia_h
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Although I don't know even the region of the US in which you live, I offer this possibility:

https://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/1000/1608.html

"Some suggested varieties for Ohio gardens are Sweet Slice Burpless, Straight 8, Poinsett, Dasher II and Marketmore 80 for slicing. Boston Pickling are good for pickles and Bushmaster and Spacemaster are good for container gardening. Unusual varieties include Lemon, a small yellow type, and Armenian, a long, slender, sweet variety. There are many new and excellent hybrid varieties available as well. Refer to the end of tthis fact sheet for varieties and their characteristics."

So could they be Straight Eights?

I hope you LOVE to make pickles...

Cynthia H.
El Cerrito, CA
USDA Zone 9, Sunset Zone 17

TheLorax
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Hi, I'm in the Midwest. Great Lakes region to be specific.

Pickles? Not exactly. I don't even know how to can. Wish I did, but I don't. Sort of afraid to ask why you wanted to know if I loved pickles or not but go ahead and tell me the bad news.

We are big salad eaters around here. We mostly use cukes in salads but sometimes as a snack we spread philly on them.

I looked up a photo of Straight Eights and I have to tell you that my plants are in such poor condition that I couldn't tell you if that's what I have or not. I tossed four of them in the composter this evening. Will probably end up tossing four more in the composter tomorrow. Debatable whether any of the other four will make it but we'll see.

I've got two more decent sized planters. Probably around 5 gallons each. I've got rhubarb, tomatoes, and half dead cukes in planters so far. Can you recommend a vegetable for the last two planters? We'll eat literally anything over here. Seems as if the only vegetable that no one particularly cares for would be lima beans and we even use those is soups and salads so anything is fair game if it lends itself to containers.

cynthia_h
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I love raw cukes myself, but the idea of trying to keep up w/the production of 12 (twelve!) cuke plants was a bit...overwhelming.

It's also possible to make "refrigerator pickles," which don't need to be canned, but they have to stay cold all the time.

Hope some of the plants make it.

Cynthia

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Quietly Awesome
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Most likely they are the Straight 8's for this area. You can put tomato cages around them and train them up it. Perhaps some nice bell peppers for the other planter? :D

doccat5
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You could grow mesclin salad mix in one of those containers, great eating if you like salads.

Probably be a good idea to dispose of the cukes and get some fresh plants, maybe not so many unless you really, really like cucumbers. Cause once they get going........they are much like zucchini. Your friends and neighbors will begin to avoid you......LOL

pete28
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Nuts! After reading this I think I may have put in way too many cuke plants

doccat5
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That's ok, pickles are good!!! LOL

Cuke
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Usually only 8 of my 14 cucumbers make it since I start them in the garden from seed.The 8 or so plants produce a lot of cucumbers,last year I made around 27 quart jars of pickles,and 5 servings of cucumbers with vinegar.Try trellising them for space,although I never had because my garden has the space for them to grow free,even though last year they took over the tomatoes.I heard if you trellise cucumbers,they get more sunlight and produce more,all up to you though.

As for cucumber recipes,pickles are always great if you like them.My mom taught me how to can so each year we can pickles together,so much fun.Pickles are best to can because we add vinegar,which keeps bacteria from growing so it can be stored in our pantry for about 16 months.All you do is after you pack the jars,put them in boiling water for around ten minutes.Make sure the water covers the tops of the jars.Take them out and let them cool.You should hear popping noises which means the jars have sealed,sometimes the sound is quiet or very loud.It can take everywhere from a few minutes to a few hours for a jar to seal.If you're not sure if the jar sealed,look eye level with it,if the middle dips down,then it sealed,if it didn't,either wait or refrigerate and eat.

Also,before you start canning,make sure the jar can handle the extreme heat.We used an old mayo jar before and half-way through the canning process it shattered.We threw the jar and its contents out:( Mason and Ball jars are great,they last many,many years.If you see any cracks in a jar before canning,throw it out,most likely it will break.Hope that helps.

TheLorax
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Hmmm, had a friend stop in yesterday who took one look at all my 5 gallon buckets and said, "That's going to be a lot of tomatoes, remind me to lay low over the next few months". I thought her statement was kinda odd at the time but now it's laughable given comments about the cukes.

I'm down to 2 cukes right now. Fed the last set of four that really didn't look as if they had a chance of living to my composter. Gave the remaining 2 to that friend of mine who thought they might live. She said two was just fine for her.

Have gone on line and looked up photos of Straight Eight cukes. Um, those are some pretty darn big plants. Yikes. You all must remember I am vegetable illiterate. 12 cukes seemed mighty fine to me back when I bought them in those cute little 4-packs. Never thought of having cukes out the rear and people avoiding me. I propagate for sport and people already run from me in spring. I've been known to slip whole trays in a person's car simply to unload plants. I take it I'll be slipping tomatoes and cukes in people's purses hoping they don't notice on the way out that their handbags are sort of on the heavy side?

I'll look around next week for tomato cages or some sort of a trellis for the cukes. I saw those photos online of mature plants and am very thankful to be down to only two plants. If those two don't look substantially better in a week or so, I'll replace them as doccat suggested.

Say cuke, Canning scares me. I get visions of poisoning my whole family or blowing up my kitchen when a cooker/canner blows . I cook well enough but never had anyone teach me how to can or preserve. Reading things like this makes me very hesitant to try without having the benefit of someone who has already done it a few times holding my hand in person-
https://missvickie.com/canning/cookercanner.html
I'd love to try canning, too afraid to go it on my own.

And what exactly is mesclin? Sort of sounds like something illegal ;) Lemme know what this is so I can decide whether to plant bell peppers or this mesclin. I only have two planters left. Say doccot5... bet you thought I forgot about the Bokashi and EM1. (wrong) Get to work woman.

cynthia_h
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Pressure canning is used for canning non-acid, low-sugar foods (e.g., meats, pumpkin). It *is* pretty picky, IMHO. I've done it, but I didn't like the stress. I still have the pressure-canner (and a separate pressure cooker), and if my veggies really take off this year, I might do something with it again.

However, pickles, jams, jellies, applesauce and the like are canned in a hot-water bath (sometimes called a "baine Marie"). I learned how to do it from the '70s version of The Joy of Cooking. No one in my family or among my friends had ever made jams, but mine were great, right from the start!

Most hardware stores (my local Ace) sell the baine Marie. You also need the inside rack to hold the jars straight but apart from one another, a "jar lifter," and a large funnel to pour food into the jar w/o getting it on the rim. The same hardware store will sell canning jars with the two-part lids. Fancy kitchen stores also sell this stuff, but at a steep mark-up. I've seen canning jars offered on my local FreeCycle lists, but of course you would want to purchase new flat parts for the jars; they're recommended for one-time use only.

Run the jars and the screw-top part of the lids through the dishwasher and don't touch them until you're ready to put the food into them.

Cover the flat parts of the lids in a bowl with very hot water and leave them there until ready to close up the jars.

The only mechanical device (besides your stove) that you need for hot-water-bath canning is a timer. Well, you *could* use a watch/clock! :) Different sizes of jars require different lengths of time in the hot water. The recipe will specify how long.

Take a look at a Joy of Cooking (I don't know whether the newest one includes canning info; the "Ethan" update with tapas in the '80s dropped the chapter altogether, to MUCH negative reaction) or other complete cookbook. Make photocopies of the pages if you'd like to write some notes for each different crop.

Don't limit your veg production because of a fear of canning. Other reasons, maybe! but not this one, b/c it really--ah--CAN be learned from a book.

I've given apple butter and other personal specialties as gifts for years, and no one has ever done anything other than say "Wow! Thanks!" No upset tummies, just vanishing food.

Cynthia H.
El Cerrito, CA
USDA Zone 9, Sunset Zone 17

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JennyC
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Lorax, you may safely can acidic foods without pressure, which greatly reduces the scary factor. I'm going to can only the acidic stuff this year while I get my husband used to the idea of the pressure canner! :) This means most heirloom tomatoes (newer hybrids are often bred to be low-acid), most berries, and any pickles, since they're made with vinegar. It does make your cucumber dilemma (resisted the urge to say "pickle") easier if you choose to can your way out of it. A good book on safer modern tecniques is Putting Food By by Janet Greene.

And I have a refrigerator pickle recipe around here somewhere, if you want it. No canning required.

TheLorax
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My husband bought me another concrete planter this morning when he read this thread. So, I can try Quietly Awesome's bell peppers and whatever doccat's mesclin is.

I'm going to try to can pears, peaches, and tomatoes this year. That's it, just three. If it goes ok, maybe I'll try more next year.

If I end up with a boatload of cukes, I'll use JennyC's refrigerator recipe.

I found that one book recommended by you over at Amazon. Looked good to me even before you suggested it but must admit I was looking at the one for Dummies.

Found free videos and watched a few. Interesting. Here are the videos I found listed out-
https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=39971#39971

I have a pressure canner already. MIB from Ace Hardware which must be a large chain because they're out my way too. Don't recall Ace selling a Baine Marie but if I have the pressure canner, do I need one? I do have a brand new box of mason jars. No jar lifter though but Ace still has an aisle for canning.

I do have a timer.

I like apple butter.

There must be basic recipes online. Any sites you two gals use? Just curious. I'm only interested in the basics. Nothing fancy.

Editing to add my husband also bought me some fancy cucumber stakes.

TheLorax
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Mesclun is a mix of salad greens and isn't any one lettuce! Mystery solved!

https://www.reneesgarden.com/articles/mesclun.html

Have planter, which types of readily available greens should be planted in it?

doccat5
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Isn't the internet a wonderful thing? grin

TheLorax
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Yes, it is... when the expert spells properly for the poor disadvantaged veggie lover :hehe: Forgive me, I couldn't resist. I've done the exact same thing in the past and repeated the misspelling throughout entire documents.

This mesclin/mesclun deal gets funnier. I didn't realize the seeds could be purchased pre-mixed. I dragged my girlfriend over to Home Depot with me today to help me pick a few peppers as well as to pick an assortment of greens for the new planter. We get to the seed department and I tell her to just pick an assortment for me and she reaches forward and plucks one pack of Ferry-Morse 'Gourmet Greens Mixture' from the display, rolls her eyes, and looks at me as if I've lost it. I'm ok with that. I lose it a lot but normally find it sooner or later.

The peppers we picked were Big Bertha, Chocolate, and Yellow.

doccat5
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Sorry about the spelling, I was winging it. Yummy peppers, the Chocolates are wonderful. They look and smell like milk chocolate and turn green when cooked. Very sweet taste.........good stuff!

TheLorax
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Spelling errors happen. I spelled vascular vasculer through a whole document recently. Sometimes you just get in that phonetic spelling mode and miss the obvious. Dictionaries have how many spelling errors in them? If they can do it, so can we.

My girlfriend picked the Chocolate and the Big Bertha. I picked the yellow. Figured I'd have colorful peppers with the greens and reds of Big Bertha, the deep brownish maroonish purple of the Chocolate combined with the yellowish orange of the Yellow. I had fun yesterday.

I did get peppers in the planters and planted the mesclun seed. I also added the wire cages to some of my tomatoes. I need two more tomato wires for my Mortgage Lifter tomatoes. I hear those get big.

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applestar
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Lorax - I'm trying companion planting cukes with corn and sunflowers. Cukes are supposed to provide living mulch under the corn and sunflowers, as well as provide prickly vines that keeps away preditors, while corn and sunflowers provide something for the cukes to climb as well as occasional shade to keep those cukes cool. :wink: Never done it before so I can't tell you how effective this will be.

TheLorax
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applestar, please take photos. I'd like to see what you've created!

I thought cukes were full sun plants? If they aren't, I need to move them real quick.

I have an update on my mesclun planter. There are babies in there! Seems as if the seeds are sprouting!

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applestar
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I have an update on my mesclun planter. There are babies in there! Seems as if the seeds are sprouting!
I hope you're better at this than I am! I interplanted parts of my veggie bed with left over mesculun mix (last year I'd planted them in weed-free mix in a container, but what they looked like escapes me....) My lettuce squares have all kinds of babies -- I only recognize lettuce :shock: :oops: ... so that I'm having trouble "thinning" -- I'll have to get ruthless soon! I may end up just pulling out everything except lettuce...

I'll post a picture of my corn/cuke bed soon. :?

TheLorax
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You hope I'm better at this than you are??? Surely you jest. This is the first time I've ever tried mesclun. I took a look at the seedlings and the first thoughts that entered my head were, "oh great, how do I tell what's a weed and what isn't in there". Figured I'd just let them grow out and thin from there if anything jumped out at me as not being a green for a salad. If you want, I can take a photo of what is sprouting in my planter and e-mail it to you for comparison sake. Now, If I can only remember to start more mesclun seeds in that planter in about another 10 days or so. I believe this mix is staggered at 2 week intervals or maybe it was 3 week intervals.

As far as the cukes go, everything I'm reading online says full sun so I'm going to leave them where they are.

One thing I have noticed about container gardening is that you have to keep an eagle eye on the containers. They dry out so darn fast. This morning I spent an easy 45 minutes dragging the hose around from area to area watering just the vegetables. Temps were in the mid 80's today so it was hot. I had just watered those plants yesterday morning and yesterday it was only around 80. If this is any indicator of what's to come over summer, I'm going to be spending darn near an hour every morning watering veggies and fruits every day. I've hooked up hoses to each spigot and I'm leaving them lay on the ground. I think it will be a lot easier in the future when all the produce is together in one spot.

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applestar
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Here is a photo of my corn/cucumber/sunflower patch (it's 2' x 6'):
[img]https://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll272/applesbucket/Image948.jpg[/img]
I may get in trouble later because they're planted a bit closer than they should be, but for now, I'll leave them the way they are. The bed was filled with soiled gerbil bedding, alfalfa pellets (couldn't get meal), homemade compost, mushroom compost, "Bumper Crop", bagged top soil,coffee grounds, and green sand. Since I got cuke transplants instead of sowing seeds, these cukes are bigger than they should be (in my 3 sisters patch with corn/pumpkin/bean, the pumpkins are juuust showing tips of their true leaves and the beans haven't even come up yet). So I may start off giving the cukes a little trellis to climb. BTW, I think I had it backwards, the cukes shade the roots of corn. In any case, you notice the cukes are planted in front of the corn.

Here are some photos of my lettuce squares and carrot squares:
[img]https://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll272/applesbucket/Image942.jpg[/img] [img]https://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll272/applesbucket/Image943.jpg[/img] [img]https://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll272/applesbucket/Image944.jpg[/img]

I'm thinking the triagular leaved plant is lambs quarters and can be eaten.
The lettuce are either Four Season or Buttercrunch. Eventually, each of these are supposed to take over an entire square foot. I just want to know which of these thinnings I can eat and which I should pull right away. :roll: :oops: I found some lettuce in the carrot squares too so those I'm saving as long as I can. 8)

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maseverde
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pete28 wrote:Nuts! After reading this I think I may have put in way too many cuke plants

I think roomie and I did this as well. and she planted them about 6inches apart. ouch.



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