Cucumbers Archives - The Gardening Adventure

Relocate mature plants Garden journal – September 2020 Part 2

During the second half of September, we had a few days with temperatures in the 80s and I was able to do some work in the garden. I had to relocate mature plants to make space for the cool season plants. I didn’t want to be late with my cool season plants like last year, so I decided to start early.

One of the tomato plants was getting infested again with a lot of spider mites. The spider mites love the heat and low humidity weather that we’ve had lately and they multiplied fast. I removed most of the leaves and sprayed the plant again with neem oil.

The cucumber plants that were in the ground stopped producing fruits for some time. So I decided to remove them to allow more sun to get to the peppers and eggplants.

In order to make space for the cool plants in the garden beds, I removed and relocated a few mature plants. I removed the celery, arugula and strawberry plants from the garden bed where the big tomato plant is. I purchased a new type of garden soil, Amend from Kellogg, and I mixed it into the existing soil. Afterwards, I planted parsnip, carrots, beets, onions and radishes.

Because my seedlings are not ready to be transplanted outside yet, I purchased 6 seedlings of purple broccoli and transplanted them in the same garden bed.

I used the homemade compost in another garden bed. Because it was enough to cover only about 75% of the space, I will use planting mix and manure for the other 25%.

Relocate mature plants

Last year I compromised my cool season plants because I didn’t remove or relocate mature plants and I planted the cool season crop between a few leftover plants from the warm season. Another mistake was that I transplanted seedlings too late in the fall. Hence this year I decided to do it right and start fresh with my garden beds and a little earlier.

Relocate strawberries

As space is always a problem in my garden, I was planing to relocate the strawberry plants in pots. But after I read an article on Greg Alder’s blog in which he had transplanted strawberries next to the fruit trees, I got inspired to do it the same way.

First I prepared the new location next to my apple tree, by removing the layer of wood chips. Afterwards I watered the place a few times to be sure the water gets at least 4″ deep and made holes for the strawberry plants to go in.

Next I removed the plants from the old location and cut all the runners to have only individual plants and placed them in holes in the new location.

Next to the strawberries I had a few arugula plants that needed to be relocated also. I decided to move them into the other bed with homemade compost. I also watered the new location until the water got at least 4″ deep into the soil, and then I relocated the arugula plants.

Relocate parsley

Because I moved my blackberry plants from the 5 gallon pots into bigger ones, I also had to relocate the parsley plants. As a result of that, I moved them next to the arugula plants as the space was already prepared.

Transplanting blackberry

I created the new potting mix needed to transplant the blackberry plants. In order to do that I took the old potting mix from the parsley plants and mixed it with bark, peat moss, perlite, fertilizer and garden lime. The experiment with the potting mix tried during the quarantine wasn’t successful, so now that I could get all the ingredients, I did it by the original recipe.

In the beginning of the month, when we had the record heat wave, I moved the blackberry plants in the shade next to some trees. And surprise, all the tips the touched the soil developed roots. I cut them and placed them in 4″ pots, hopefully I will get more plants by next year.

I decide to transplant the other Blackberry plant directly into the ground, so I can see if it will be a difference between the plants next season.

Blackberry plant transplanted in the ground

Transplanting raspberry

A friend planted a few raspberry plants last year and he harvested a lot of fruits this year. Since my kids love to eat berries, I want to give it a try. The variety that I found is called Willamette.

Next year I should have strawberries, blackberries, blueberries and raspberries if everything goes well. We’re all looking forward to it!

Another project was to fertilize the papaya, dragon fruit and artichoke plants. I finally found some chicken manure at Armstrong gardens.

This month I tried for the first time the air layering of cherimoya and fig trees, hopefully I will have positive results in a month or two.

Garden journal – August 2020 part 1

This month I removed 2 of my best producing tomato plants of the season: the red cherry tomato and the 2nd year beefsteak tomato plant. I harvested 779 cherry tomatoes weighting 20.5 lbs and 161 beefsteak tomatoes weighting 46.5 lbs.

We had a few heat waves and I was afraid I will lose the 10 feet tall cherry tomato plant due to the heat, so I ended up watering it too much. I think I accidentally drowned it.

I cut the beefsteak tomato almost all the way down and left just a little bit in case it will decide to give new growth for a 3rd year.

The seeds from the radish plants that I pulled out in second part of July were ready to be removed from the pods.

The dragon fruit started having a lot of flowers recently and I pollinated about 30 flowers in 3 days. This year I started collecting the pollen in a small container and used it to pollinate other flowers. I store it in the freezer between pollination sessions for the next wave of dragon fruit flowers. This technique was suggested by the local gardening group and it improved my success rate immensely. I have been using the same pollination technique for the cherimoya trees for the past few years.

The flowers open only during the night time and stay open just for a few hours. They must be hand pollinated during the night time, between 10 PM and 12 AM.

I moved the pots with 2nd generation of cucumbers from the temporary location next to the avocado tree and dragon fruit because they were getting too big.

We were lucky to have a lot fruit from our fig trees this year. I have been drying them using our dehydrator and I also made another round of jam. This time I mixed the figs with small peaches from our tree and this is by far, one of the most amazing jams I’ve made!

I harvested more peppers (Gogosari) than we could eat and made some pickled peppers, one of my favorites, so we can eat them during the off season. I also saved seeds from the peppers for the next year.

Garden journal – July 2020 part 2

In the second part of the month of July I harvested the radish seeds. They were dry and ready to harvest.

This year I had a lot of celery plants that sprouted from last year’s plants seeds everywhere in my garden. I removed around 70% of the plants to make space for the next season plants. I pulled them out with the roots and gave to some neighbors to transplant them in their gardens.

The second year tomato plant was fully infested with spider mites. I removed most of the leaves and I will remove the plant in a week or two. I want to wait for a few of the bigger tomato to be ripe.

The figs started to ripe a few weeks earlier than last year. We dried most of them and also made jam twice. Second time we added some peaches to the fig jam.

I don’t have to worry about saving some cucumbers for seeds. Every time a few hide between leaves and I discover them when is already too late to be harvested. I leave them on the vine until they are ready to collect the seeds.

Garden journal – July 2020 part 1

The cucumber plants grew too big for my initial support system. I had to do something about it because cucumbers started covering and attaching themselves to the neighboring plants.

I built a support system with the materials that I had available, not the best system but it’s doing its job. Below are some pictures.

The dragon fruit started flowering this month. Since last year I had around 40 flowers and no fruits, this year I got some advice of how to better pollinate them. As a result from the first 6 flowers I have 1 dragon fruit.

This month I harvested all my onions.

Different plants are spouting from the compost that I used for my tomatoes in pots. This time I moved 3 peppers and 1 eggplant into small pots.

We had another heat wave and I had to cover some of the plants.

Garden journal – June 2020 part 2

I continued removing yellow and brown tomatoes leaves in the second half of the month of June.

It was also the time to harvest more parsnip plants. The leaves grew too big and the tomatoes plants next to them didn’t have enough air flow.

I transplanted the last eggplants seedlings also. They were long overdue but I finally created some space after removing celery plants.

I harvested onions for the first time and I started the curing process as it can be seen in the picture below.

Since the cucumbers that I transplanted in pots are not doing well, I decided to plant some more and this time my potting mix is 90% home made compost. Part of the reason why they are not doing well is because I didn’t have the right ingredients for the potting mix and I had to improvise earlier this year. This time, I filled the pots with 90% compost and on top of it I used thin layer of potting mix to plant the seeds.

How to transplant cucumbers

One of the major projects or today was to transplant cucumbers seedlings in the garden.

I had a few other smaller projects:

Harvest beets
Trim tomato plants
Add planting mix to the garden beds
Remove poppy plants
Treat eggplants against pests

How to transplant cucumbers

The cucumber seeds planted on April 4 are now seedlings ready to be transplanted. I had seedlings in 5 of the 6 squares and I planted 2 of them in the ground and 3 in pots.

Next I will explain step by step how I transplant cucumbers seedlings in the ground. I’m using one extra ingredient that I don’t use for any other plants. It’s an organic granulated slow release fertilizer that I purchased a few years ago and I noticed that the cucumbers love it.

Firstly I make a deep hole, place the granulated fertilizer at the bottom and then I cover it with soil. The fertilizer will help the plant later in the season, when the roots will grow deeper and reach it.

Next I add to the hole my regular ingredients: half measuring scoop of starter fertilizer, half scoop of grounded eggshells and quarter scoop of epsom salt. Then I carefully remove the cucumber seedling from the container and place it into the hole. I cover the seedling with soil and when I’m about 1″ from the ground level, I add the earthworm castings which I cover with a very thin layer of soil. The last step is to water it thoroughly to make sure the water gets all the way down to the roots.

Cucumber seedlings — Cucumbers ready to be transplanted

Hole for cucumbers — Hole after I covered the granulated fertilizer with soil

Below are the seedlings transplanted into 5 gallon pots. I explained my method to transplant cucumbers in pots in this post.

Tomato care

During this time, the tomato plants are growing very fast. I have to check them almost every day because they get fruits and if they don’t have adequate support, they will fall – like the one in the picture below.

I secured the fallen branches to the trellises using plastic rings. In the next pictures I will show the entire tomato plant before and after. Circled in red are the branches which needed saving.

Another project was to trim all the tomato leaves that were touching the ground. in order to stop the spread of the diseases and pests.

Beets

Last year I left one of my beets plant go to seeds and this year beet plants spouted everywhere. The one in the picture below grew between 2 concrete blocks. There was almost no space between, but somehow it managed to push the vertical ones and grew one of the biggest beet roots of this season. It did much better than the ones I carefully planted in the prepared soil and watered and fertilized 🙂

At the end of one of my garden beds, I had planted beets which I wanted to use in salads. Since I had a lot of lettuce growing in the same period, I barely used the beet leaves. The tomato plants which were growing next the them were showing signs of distress, so I decided to pull out all the beets.

After I removed the beets, I added some planting mix to the soil and transplanted 2 basil plants in their place.

Other projects

Some of the garden beds needed extra planting soil. Usually you can add the planting soil between seasons, when the beds are empty and you can mix it with the soil as per instructions, but my garden beds are almost always full. Sometimes I might have half a bed empty and I do it in the recommended way. That was not the case today, so I just sprinkled the planting mix between the plants.

Every year I get tall and beautiful poppy flowers. I saved the seeds for the last 2 years, but I didn’t use them because I’m not 100% sure they are edible. This year I decided to remove them before harvest time because they are shading the zucchini and celery plants and slowing their growth.

The last project of the day was to take care of the pests that were eating the leaves of my eggplants. I like to use organic Bonide bug and slug killer to protect my plants.

How to transplant cucumbers in pots

In today’s post I will explain how to transplant cucumbers in pots. The ones that I used are 5 gallons size.

Firstly, I made my own potting mix using 3 buckets of wood chips, one bucket of peat moss, one bucket of steer manure, half bucket of perlite and the old soil from 4 pots. Last year’s plants already took most of the nutrients from the soil, so it needed to be enriched.

After I mixed all the ingredients together, I had enough potting mix to fill 11 pots. Below are a few pictures with the ingredients.

The cucumber seedlings which I transplanted can be seen in the picture below. I planted a few of them in 3 pots (2 seedlings in each one) and the remaining ones in the ground.

How to transplant cucumbers in pots

First I filled the pots with potting mix and I made a hole in the middle. After that I added the starter fertilizer, epsom salt and grounded eggshells.

The quantities that I used are half of my scoop of starter fertilizer, half scoop of eggshells and a quarter scoop of epsom salt. The measure scoop that I used is the red one in the picture below.

I had 4 cucumbers seedlings in the same square and I splitted them in 2. You have to be careful when you do it since the cucumbers don’t like it when you mess with their roots. They are much more sensible than other plants.

I placed one of them in the hole and covered it with soil. After that, I put the worm castings and covered them with a thin layer of potting mix.

Updates

In this section I will regularly add pictures with the different stages of the cucumber plants throughout the season.

Preparations for 5 days of rain – April 4 2020

We are expecting 5 consecutive days of rain in a few days. I had some projects that needed to be finished before then:

find a place for the new grape vine that I received from a friend
transplant the last tomato seedlings
empty the barrels for rainwater collection
plant cucumbers and radishes

Below is a picture with my newest addition to the garden: a Kyoho grapevine that I received from a friend. My garden is almost full and the gravine needed a place with full sun, so I decided to place it next to the house. This is probably a temporary location for this year. I built a small wood structure with the materials that I already had, and which I plan to extend as needed.

The next project was to transplant the last 3 tomato seedlings. Below is a picture with one of them. They needed to be transplanted, because they were growing too big for their pots. I was trying to postpone the transplant because I have parsnip currently growing in the location where I wanted to put the tomatoes. I was hoping that I could delay it by another 2 weeks, but as you can see in the second picture, the roots were very close to be root bound.

This is the location that I had planed for my last 2 tomatoes seedlings. I removed 2 parsnip plants to make room for the tomatoes and probably will remove the other ones in 2-3 weeks.

In the picture below, if you look very carefully, you can see the new tomatoes. I bent the parsnip leafs for the tomatoes to get more sun.

I planted the last tomato in a 15 gallon container.

My plan for this year was to plant tomatoes only in the ground and have less than 20 plants total. But because of the coronavirus, I will plant a few in containers also, to have extra produce to share with neighbors and friends.

This is my rain water collection system. I emptied the barrels to make space for the next round of rain water.

The cucumbers that I transplanted in the garden a month ago have died because I transplanted them too early outside. We had very nice weather at the end of February, but in March it was raining a lot and it was cold during the night. Cucumbers need night temperatures of over 50. I planted new cucumbers seeds and I plan to keep them inside for now, because we will have another week with temperatures below 50.

I also tried to grow vegetables that grow faster, so we wouldn’t need to go often to the grocery store during the quarantine. I planted radishes wherever I saw an empty space, like between these peepers and eggplants.