My Harvest Life - Episode 11: Cucumber Encumbered

Year 1 - Summer Day 66

I have too many cucumbers!  It doesn't come much as a surprise but the plants continue to produce bunches of interesting bright yellow lemon cucumbers.  Twice I have brought a batch of twelve or so to work and they were nabbed up immediately.  So far my coworkers have been intrigued and delighted by the interesting, non-traditional fruit.  Just this morning, I ended up picking nine more cucumbers, and I wasn't even going out to find any!  But not all is perfect in Cucumber land, my plants are suffering a bit.

The cucumber plants are plagued with a bad case of Powdery Mildew, which is slowing down photosynthesis and killing off the leaves.  There are things I can do to help prevent it, such as next year I will build a bigger trellis for the plants to grow up on, giving them space to breathe and air out, as well as use a drip irrigation system so that I do not get the leaves wet as often.  With how I was watering the plants, the leaves would often get wet and most likely contributed to a good environment for the mildew to spread.  I have mixed up a treatment though, water with a bit of dish soap, vegetable oil and baking soda is said to help prevent the spread of the mildew so I've sprayed a bunch of that on my plants and we'll see if it helps.

Powdery Mildew

The bean plants however continue to produce plenty of beans and the tomato plants are getting very close!  Lots of little tomatoes are popping up all over the massive behemoths that are my tomato plants.  The ones that rooted certainly thrived this season.  I did not trim them back at all but perhaps next year I can trim them down a bit to stop them from getting so massive and perhaps spur a bit more fruit production.

Also the basement herb garden has had a bunch of the herbs sprout so it will be nice to see those thrive.  They're doing even better with the timed grow light than the outdoor herbs.  The light turns on at 6am and off at 9pm and gives them a nice long growing day in the basement.  Having a timed outlet is extremely nice because the herbs do not require a ton of water at this point since the basement is fairly moist, so it's very easy to take care of them.

Vegetable and Fruit production is in full swing!  I've gotten my first decently sized carrot and have had many delightful salads and dishes prepared with the beans and cucumbers we've harvested so far.  

- Level 1 Gardener: Jace -

Next Episode 12: Death of the Vine