Cucumbers and a Tomato Jungle

[teapot_rabbit]

Hello fellow gardeners! My last entry I had photos of dirt and weeds.




The two halves of my garden. On the right, yellow manzano peppers, Spanish musica beans, and some tomatoes. On the left, Kentucky wonder beans, yamato sanjaku cucumbers, and more tomatoes.

I may have slightly gone crazy on the tomato front. It's possible. Not likely, though. ;)

I guess I did something right with the tomatoes this year, because even the shortest are about four feet tall, most of them are over five feet now, and a few of the more ambitious vines (sungolds) got up to around seven feet. The soil was amended with composted chicken manure, and when I transplanted the tomato starts, I put a generous amount of Down to Earth brand Bio-Fish in the bottom of each hole. Then I mulched everything. My husband jokes that if I'm not careful, the tomatoes are going to eat me while I'm out watering.

This year I planted three varieties of cucumbers - yamato sanjaku, a long, green Japanese variety; dragon's egg, which is white and egg shaped (big surprise!); and lemon cucumbers, which are yellow and the size of large lemons. They're all planted in the weird eleven-inch wide beds that run along the fence in my yard. I had read about trellising cucumbers and wanted to try it, since growing cucumbers along the ground isn't really feasible in a tiny garden like mine. Good news: it works great! The yamato sanjaku raced up to the top of the six-foot fence, and kept going - up, sideways, down - I should probably get out there and give them some more strings. The dragon's egg and lemon cucumbers aren't quite as tall, but they're also growing happily up their strings.


Look at those beauties! Each one is about fifteen inches long, and they grow fast. The dragon's egg and lemon cucumbers I planted at the same time haven't produced any fruit yet. I'm definitely growing yamato sanjaku cucumbers again.


The cucumber I picked yesterday, with quilting ruler for size reference. They have little spines, but the spines come off easily if you rub them with a dishtowel or something like that.


Even at nineteen inches, the cucumber was still tender, without any tough seeds or anything. So far I haven't noticed any bitterness, and the skin is pretty tender. You could peel them, but I don't bother. They texture isn't quite as crisp as a lemon cucumber - it's a little more meaty, like I would expect from a Japanese variety.


A tiny melon! I'm so excited. It's an ichiba kouji, and right now it's about the size of a lemon. I've never grown melons successfully before, so here's hoping...

Comments

[indeliblesasha]

Wow. I just don't even have the words for how gorgeous and awesome that is. I am so jealous. :D

[teapot_rabbit]

Aw, thanks! It's such a weird space that gardening is a little bit tricky, and combined with a couple random plant die offs, I've been feeling slightly gloomy about everything. It's nice to get some positive outside perspective! ^__^

[via_ostiense]

Your garden is gorgeous! Do they get full sun from overhead all day?

[teapot_rabbit]

The tomato side of the garden gets sun from about 10 o'clockish to maybe 2:30 or 3:00, while the cucumber side gets afternoon sun. It seems to be enough sun for tomatoes, but not really enough sun for peppers (not shown above) as they're getting rather leggy and sad.

[primsong]

Amazing and beautiful! Well done, well done indeed.

[strawberry_suite]

Oh, I'm so jealous! That looks so lush and green and wonderful (and delicious!). It must be so nice to walk through.

[teapot_rabbit]

Thank you! At the moment it's rather difficult to walk through, really. On one end the cucumbers have grown across the path and are twining into the tomatoes, so I have to duck down and go underneath them.

[strawberry_suite]

Oh, but it's such a pretty, cozy kind of difficult! (Says the envious apartment-dweller with not so much as a houseplant.) It reminds me of my grandparents' community garden--you have to get pretty creative if you want to actually move from one plot to another.