The other day Dave came home and walked past the garden, per usual. He came in saying, “Honey, did you know we have a cucumber?”
We all rushed out to look.
It’s an Arkansas pickling cucumber plant from some heirloom seeds I bought a year or two ago. I’ve tried several times and ways growing from seed and haven’t succeeded yet. This year we’d all but given up on our garden. Everything sprouted, but then for months it just stayed the same size. Didn’t grow, didn’t die. (Same thing happened last year.)
One day something strange happened. The kids forgot to turn off the hose, and it was left dripping into the garden for several hours. I went outside for some other reason and noticed the garden was flooded. “Oh, no!” I thought, but then figured, hey, whatever, I was just about to compost all those non-bearing plants anyway in preparation for maybe some purchased plants that might grow.
The next day, everything was noticeably taller.
Well, we’d been watering daily, but we hadn’t *soaked* the garden box. In fact one theory we’d heard about our lack of success was “overwatering.” But, I supposed we didn’t account for the sunny spot being a problem for moisture. Well anyway, after that we kept flooding it and it kept growing well. Also, we’ve gotten a good bit of nice brief but effective thundershowers lately. I’m hoping the tomato plants which have picked up some height, will eventually flower and fruit, as well!
we have quite a few figs waiting to ripen, too!
So I can see on the plants there are several other small cucumbers beginning and I’m hopeful we’ll actually have a small harvest! And, nothing seems to be snacking on it yet!
It’s encouraging to have a gardening success after all this effort. 🙂
Woooo-whoooo! Yippie!
Looks yummy!
I wonder if maybe I should soak mine. I’ve got tons of cucumbers, but they either dry up, or start curling as they grow, which causes them to not finish growing. I cut down my zucchini the other day because of all the squash beetles getting to it. No matter how many times I squished their eggs, they still took out zucchini after zucchini. I finally got tired of watering something I wasn’t getting anything from.
What fun!
What a fun way to accidentally figure out how to get your garden to grow. It always seems like you don’t notice the cucumbers until they’re full size, too.