The First of Hopefully Many Cucumbers

I have been working in the garden for the past week including this past weekend.  The weather has been hot which is great for many of my plants including tomatoes, melons, and cucumbers.  I have not picked any tomatoes as they have not started to turn red.  They should begin ripening at any time and can’t wait to harvest them.

Cucumbers on the other hand have been growing quite well along with zucchini and pumpkins that are coming along.  All my cucumber plants are now producing flowers and it is only a matter of time before I start picking many of them.  Today I happened to pick the first of many cucumbers.

I let it sit on the vine a little bit longer than needed, but I think it will still taste amazing once I cut it open.  Sometimes cucumbers can become bitter if left on the vine too long, but I made sure that I placed plenty of lime in order for the plant to produce the sugars and sweetness they need.

It weighed one and a half pounds which is about average for the first cucumber.  Hopefully I will get more that will weigh over two pounds which I can then maybe store over the winter.  That is my goal this season to grow as many cucumbers as I can in order to have enough for storing.  Let’s see if I can reach this goal.  This is definitely a good start.

Along with picking cucumbers and harvesting zucchini I also have been weeding and placing mulch around corn and beans.  The beans and corn are the toughest plants to weed and to prevent weeds from popping up again I made sure I laid down a thick layer of mulch.

Before laying down mulch I also gave them both some dry fertilizers to hopefully last a couple of weeks until they start producing fruit.  Corn needed blood meal while pole beans require kelp meal which is full of potassium.  I am planning to add wood ash to both of them in a couple of weeks or sooner.  It all depends on how well they are thriving.

Pumpkins are growing good and some of them are beginning to turn orange already.

You can’t tell that any of the above pumpkins are starting to ripen, but I checked today and the last pumpkin above is starting to turn orange.  The others are still growing and soon they too will ripen and will be ready for October when I get to cut them open.

Melons on the other hand are producing flowers and some fruits, but I am not sure if they have been pollinated or not.  I have only found one on a cantaloupe plant, but it has not been growing as fast as it should.  I might be wrong, but I don’t think that it has been worked on by a bee.

I thinned out my cabbage and broccoli plants today before they got too big in order to remove the weak ones.

I even decided to plant some more broccoli.  I love broccoli and I thought that I didn’t have enough so I planted ten more pots today.  With the scattered showers we have been getting today it was perfect weather to plant them in pots.  They will still have plenty of time to produce broccoli as long as we have a normal summer and fall.