Cucumbers - is it time yet??

in the greenhouse I have only grown once outside the skin was a bit tough but ok once sliced off .

Sorry to see and hear about your lawn

 

I have had a terrible time with cukes this year. First some wilt dropped a first batch like limp rags (unknown kind, some free seed). Then the next batch (straight 8 from seed) showed terrible cirrhosis and brown edges on its first true leaves after planting out for a wile (seeded in pots). I used MgSO4 topically but not in time. So I bought a small pot of burpless with 4 in it at cotyledon stage, separated them, and put them out with everything I could think of to amend the soil - and some creature ate every one yesterday and they were doing well! And not my chickens, the fence and wing clip stopped that.

So in a totally different part of the raised bed I have 1 lemon cuke and 1 organic seed vague thing from seed someone gave me. They are muddling along after the MgSO4 spraying but everyday I expect their loss. So I bought a small pot with 5 small straight 8 ($1.79 for a small pot of them - the reason I try to not buy, but it had 5 in it) and seperated them and planted them out; each in two gallon pots and will keep them at my house till big.

In the pots I put 1/2 chopped oak leaves and 1/2 of some kind of leaf mold/compost I rooted out of the forest floor. The leaves are at the bottom, the black compost stuff on the top. And top of it all is some used potting soil I got from a large potted plant - dead - that someone set out at the road for trash pickup that I salvaged.

Normally I just grow straight 8, Armenian yard long, and pickling, all from seed just planted in the ground. Bad year, really late now. We eat cukes every day normally; during the hot months.

 

Sorry to hear it Colne, but I'm sorry to say it sounds like the story of an average year for growing Cues in my garden

 

I usually do really well with cuks, after one or two problems. My tomatoes are really going though, getting closer to ripe fruit, but the first bugs on some and small brown spots on the leaves of others.

How did the subsistence farmers make it? Ha, and my wife weeded half of my okra out a wile ago and when I mentioned what they were she stuffed them back into the soil and they did not even notice. That is good going!

 

@colne , I read on here a while back that" cucumbers spend their time thinking of a thousand different ways to die"
Jenny

 

That was what Betty McDonald said of chicks when she and her husband carved an egg farm out of the Olympic wilderness in the Great Depression. It was a trying effort and her theory was that chickens are such ornery and spiteful things they were happy to die just to annoy you. I know where she was coming from, being a chicken keeper - but in easy times so my chickens are not so motivated as they know it does not bother me too much. Still 8 chicks going in my flock.

 

My lemon cucumber has gotten to the point I tied a string for it to climb! The straight 8 and marketmore (I think) that died/were eaten have not been replaced yet - I am growing them in 2 gallon pots till they are robust enough for the problems of where they go. But one is on the way up! Also the 3 anonymous 3 'organic' seeds I was given are beside the lemon cuke and are getting towards being ready to climb, some true leaves.

Has anyone planted a lemon cucumber? just trying it for the first time.

Edit: the topical spray of Epsom salts seemed to have stopped the leaf cirrhosis and browning edges!