Cucumber News

I'm growing four cucumber plants this year which is almost certainly too many (I know the picture has five seedlings but one was a spindly outcast). But I'd rather have too many than not enough. Again I bought a packet of all-female plants to save the hassle of having to remove any male flowers. The variety is Passandra and is 'mini' type - you pick the fruit when they are about 15cm long.

After a few days in my home-made propagators this is the state of them on the 24th March:

Young Cucumber seedlings

Well, it's nearly 10 weeks on and now look at them! The cucumbers themselves are already a nice size. The biggest one at the moment is over 5cm so not long to wait ...

Loads of flowers on the cucumbers

They've been re-homed into the old recycling boxes and I've put up some netting in the greenhouse for them to climb up. Hopefully it should be able to bear their weight.

The Courgettes are getting bigger

And here they are in the very overcrowded greenhouse! My only concern now is that as they grow they'll start to block out light to the other plants.

Lots of pots in the greenhouse

If you look closely you can see the irrigation system which is part of another hi-tech project and will be reported on soon - once it's up and running!

It Worked!

My new cucumbers have germinated! The packet said seedlings should appear in 3-5 days. I must admit I was sceptical. However after three days all four seeds have come good - so good in fact that I've had to get a bigger lid on my home made propagator! I'm going to leave them in there now for a few more days.

Germinated cucumbers in my home made propagator

Other News
This is the view of the potato patch. I've earthed them up twice but still they grow like things possessed! Maybe I'll do it one more time and then leave them alone. As for the ones in containers, they are full to the brim with earth so not a lot of choice with those!

Potatoes growing well

I have transplanted the best French Beans into their own individual pots (bottom of picture), along with 6 bell pepper plants (top-right). There is also one tomato plant which has not been used yet. The whole internet gardening fraternity seems to have gone mad on 'upside down tomatoes'. Here is another link. I may have a go at this - I've not decided yet, but it would be a shame to waste the plant by not doing anything with it.

French beans (bottom) and peppers (top right)

Cucumbers revisited

One of the first vegetable seeds we sowed in Matt's Patch were cucumbers. Now, I've never had much luck with growing cucumbers. The last time I tried I think we got one small cucumber before the plants decided to go to the big allotment in the sky.

This year I managed to get three seedlings growing and since I planted them in a growbag two have died. My luck with cucumbers continues.

So, with my enthusiasm still intact, I decided to get some more seeds on the go quickly. Yesterday I looked through all the different types of cucumber in the local seed shop. I've decided to go for an all female variety called Aurelia F1. They should be less trouble as one does not need to keep picking off the male flowers which is what I'll have to do with my remaining plant from the previous effort (Telegraph). I felt this new packet was quite expensive at £2 for 4 seeds, but then again, cucumbers are about a pound each in the supermarkets.

Reading the back it seems like they're quite demanding with regards to temperature, at least to start with. So to give them every chance I made a little propagator from a plastic strawberry punnet which I recovered from the recycling bin - better to reuse than recycle! I taped up most of the air holes on the top, leaving two open for a little ventilation. It's now sitting on the window sill in the conservatory. Please work!

Following on from my experiment where I germinated French beans in damp kitchen roll, I planted the sprouting beans in compost mixed with a little sand. This is what I was greeted with this morning - loads of beans all rising up out of the earth. I've counted over 20 which is a much better success rate. This is definitely the way to go!