Cucumbers

[TheLorax]

Yes, it is... when the expert spells properly for the poor disadvantaged veggie lover 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]

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]

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.

[applestar]

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. Never done it before so I can't tell you how effective this will be.

[TheLorax]

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!

[applestar]

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 ... 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]

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.

[applestar]

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. I found some lettuce in the carrot squares too so those I'm saving as long as I can.

[maseverde]

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.