Woo hoo!

We sure do understand. I have three myself now, so microscopic that they still have the blossoms on the ends. I made sure they got pollenated, though (you may want to avert your eyes now --- LOL).

I also just pulled up the marigolds that were sharing the cucumbers' pot. I put them in there for interest --- while the cukes were little they grew so slowly I was worried they'd never fill their pot (a 12-inch bell planter with two plants of a space-saving bush cuke variety). But they're finally looking like they need the room.

Zabby

Awww, that's great. I have my first eggplant growing, the trouble is, only one flower out of at least a dozen so far has made fruit, and while that is at least something so I know it can be done, I wonder why the rest can't go ahead and do their fruiting thing too. I hand-pollinate and everything.

I think I'll do cucumbers next year, if only so that I don't have to clean that nasty wax off the ones from the store. I have started boycotting waxed produce.

Waxed produce. Yuck!
I have 3 cuke plants out there I think, lots of blossoms, quite a few little cukes too. And the plants are just now starting to take off, I'm trying to get them to climb the arch trellis, we'll see if they cooperate.
Today I think I had the best gardening experience possible. My GD got to eat peas grown from seed she had planted and she and her little brother (who spit out the peas, silly boy!) helped eat my very first yellow zucchinni. They're delicious when they're only a few inches long! As much as I enjoy growing things and as delicious as my vegetables are, those little kids really help me see an even more important reason for bothering.

Congratulations on the cukes!

My salad bush plants were doing so poorly at the beginning of June, I thought I'd never see cukes, but somehow, that was the first veggie I got from my garden this year. I ate my first cuke last week and I'm about to get the second this week. Pickin's are rather slim after that though, so I guess I'd rather have more cukes than early cukes!

Arrggghhh! I have tons of flowers but no cukes yet! How does one hand pollinate, use a paintbrush like I do with my tomatoes? I tried that but no fruit still. *sigh* Why do tomatoes pollinate so easy but cukes are cranky for me?

I'm not positive, but I think cukes are similar to zucchini in that they don't self-pollinate like tomatoes and peppers. The female flowers are the ones with the baby cuke behind the blossom and the male flowers are the ones without the baby cuke. You have to take pollen from the male flower and pollenate the female flowere with a paintbrush if you want to manually pollinate. The pollen from a pepper or tomato flower can go directly into it's own pistil, thereby pollenating itself. Zukes and cukes (I think) are a pain if you don't have natural pollinators. Correct me if I'm wrong, anyone.

Mike

Mike, I think you're right for most kinds of cukes, though I have seen some advertised as being "all female," which presumably means they must be self-pollenating or parthenogenic. But my salad bushes definitely have male flowers on stems and females with baby cukes attached, much like my pumpkins and summer and winter squash. (The baby fruit on a Sunburst summer squash flowr by the time it opens is like an inch across, practically big enough to pick and eat already!)

Z

I never thought about cukes or zukes needing pollinating. What does it? Bees? I see bees and stuff out there, but maybe my cukes won't grow bigger if not pollinated? Yikes!

Congradulations! Yes Mike you are right they need male and female to pollinate. The bee's should be doing their job if they are all over--maybe you have more tempting flowers for them. I noticed white butterflies are in my zucchini and they have done wonderful--two picked everyday for the last few weeks. I would try to pollinate it wont hurt to try. Now I regret not planting cukes this year:( Karen "cuke envy"

DingBat,

Yes, it's bees. Or obssessive gardeners. If you've seen some bees around, you are probably ok. I think that cuke flowers usually stay open for a few days, so you've got a good chance. Pumpkins and squashes have flowers with short lives, and fewer of them, so people seem to hand-pollenate them more often to be sure.

If you want to be ultra-sure you can do it yourself. You need to have both a male and a female flower open at he same time. Pick the male (he has just a skinny stem behind him, no mini cuke). Pick off the petal part of the flower so only the middle part remains. Swish this part (stamens? pistils? someone smarter than me can tell you what it's called; all I know is it's got pollen on it!) around inside your female flower. (You can do several female flowers with one male. Let's not discuss the metaphorical implications of that.... LOL)

But you I bet yours is pollenated. If it isn't, it falls off pretty quick. Happy cukes!

Zabby

Thanks, Zabby. I think my cukes are getting bigger. Today I found my biggest zucchini was rotten at the blossom end. I almost cried. I hope the rest don't do that too. Then I will cry.

All of my flowers look the same, with no tiny cukes behind them. I think I remember seeing one that had a tiny cuke behind it a few weeks back that got me excited but I'm pretty sure it fell off. Is it possible that weather is encouraging only male flowers to develop right now? It's a shame because I have lots of flowers on my cukes but no fruit as of yet.

All my viners so far (mind you, I've only been doing this for two years, and am no expert) made only male flowers for at least a week or two before any female ones appeared. How long has your been flowering, Canuck?

Last year I was panicking; my first-ever such crop, three pumpkin plants, made nothing but males for a week, then nothing but females for 3 or 4 more days. I was going crazy; thought I'd NEVER get fruit. Started coming up with crazy cucurbit dating schemes! But pretty soon I was regularly getting both, and I ended up with 2 dozen or so pumpkins, so this year I'm trying to just have faith...

Zabby

Well it has been about 2-3 weeks since I started seeing flowers, but I think maybe I had the same problem, I saw some flowers that had miny cukes at the beginning, but none for the last while. Oh well hope everything works out before the summer fades away.

DingBat, I've a zucchini too. Some of the small zuke (not polleinated) are doing just like yours. You can pick them and eat them raw in salad, discarding the not edible part of course. It's quite easy to see when a zuke will grow and when it will not. The one polleinated (I'm sorry if it's not the exact word) is plum and glossy looking. The others are (how can I explain it) with stripes of paler green. I hope it makes sense. The male flowers have a stem, the female have none.
Agnes

WOOHOO! Just found a couple of female flowers this weekend. Hopefully they will be pollinated and I'll have some cukes growing soon!

I use "bee scent" to pollinate my veggies and fruit trees. I have tons of figs now. My nectarines and peaches has been eaten. I have miniature peach and nectarine trees, only 3'tall and 3'wide but I had more than 100 fruits in each tree. I have to thin it so much I just left about 30 fruits because it was getting too heavy I was afraid the branches will break. I have a cherimoya tree that only produced 3 fruits (before bee scent) and DH and I have been babying the trio but it had another burst of flowers and so I sprayed and now we have more baby fruits. If you're interested e-mail me. It emits the fragrance that attracts bees so they flock to the tree and pollinates them big time...B

DingBat,

After all my smug offering advice on ensuring cucumbers get pollenated, my first one withered away despite my efforts to enhance its sex life. Talk about ungrateful.

HOWEVER, a few others seem to have taken, without my intervention --- my biggest is 3 or 4 inches long now, about the size of a dill pickle. I'm waiting for it to be slicing size, however!

Hope yours are progressing...

Zabby

Zabby, that's great that you have one coming along so well. I think mine are growing, sometimes I think it's just wishful thinking. So I guess the cucumbers prefer privacy or something? hmmmmmmmmm ;D

i tried cucumbers this year. the pot was too small and i had some problems and they died. this was about a month or two ago. they were 'straight eight'. one cucumber did grow rather beautifully and there were many babies, but they all dried up and died. i only had one and i didn't do anything to pollinate it.

OK, so now I'm REALLY embarrassed. Here I was lecturing away like some great cucurbit expert, telling people how to pollenate their cucumbers, on the strength of having grown a few pumpkins successfully last year. (Well, hey, they DID spread over the whole yard, so that makes me a genius, right? LOL)

So today I'm looking through my William Dam seed catalogue, which is the local company where I bought most of my seeds. And I see that they say the variety I have, "Salad Bush," is "parthenocarpic," with "all-female flowers" and therefore needs no pollenation! So those few of mine that didn't develop must've dried up for some other reason, and I have no idea what it is. Several seem to have "taken" and be growing, so I've no complaints. Just the realization that, as usual, I know a lot less than I thought I did....

Zabby, who figures it's time to put out the seed catalogues and get out the recipe books...

Oh, zabby, you know more than I do. I had no idea any of them had gender specific (or nonspecific for that matter!) flowers. I'm awfully glad you posted about the mistake because now I've learned something else, I think I'll see if my seed pkg. makes reference to flower sex. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

BTW, size does matter and mine are defintely getting bigger! I never had any idea how pretty a cucumber vine climbing a white trellis could be. Pretty darn nice.

About pot size: some years back I grew the pickling type cucumbers in *I think* a 10" pot, they didn't do great but I had some cucumbers. Keeping them watered was the biggest problem.

DB,

We're both still learning all right!

Mine surprises me with its prettiness too, growing up my wrought-iron fence. I've got two more definitely growing in addition to my "biggie." Woo hoo! Let's do the happy cucumber dance and break out the salad dressing!

Zabby

Will the happy cucumber dance bring an end to our heat wave? I could go for a few cloudy, even rainy, days about now. I've not even been out on my balcony today. One of my cucumbers was hanging out in plain sight, over an inch long when I noticed it yesterday. Soon I'll be deciding they really are big enough to eat.

I've noticed something else that's really pretty, I have pole beans in pots on the railing, growing up to the eaves and across. From the ground they look really nice. They have blossoms too!

I need to find out how to do stuffed zucchini. I'm thinking of handing the big zuke to my neighbor and saying it's my contribution to dinner, he can make a stuffed zuke since he told me he likes it like that. Then he can tell me how he did it. I bet I have more red cherry tomatoes out there too.

The dance did the trick here. Cloudy and rainy for the next 3-4 days.

What do your pole beans climb up to get to the eaves?

My Greek cookbook's recipe for stuffed zucchini:

4 med. zucchini
2 Tbsp butter
1 sm onion, chopped
4 oz ground lamb or beef
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp chopped oregano
2 tsps chopped fresh parsley
2 tsps chopped fresh fennel (I use dill)
2 oz cooked long-grain rice
2 tbsps grated cheese
salt & pepper

[If vegetarians are coming to dinner, I omit the meat, add a few Tbsps of bread crumbs and and egg to hold it together, and am generous with the cheese]

- remove ends from zuc, chop in half, scoop out middles
- parboil for 2 minutes in boiling salted water; rinse in colde water right away
- cook onions in half the butter until soft; & transparent; add meat and cook till beginning to brown
- chop remaining zuc flesh and add to meat
- add all other ingredients, mix well, and fill hollows in zucs
- melt remaining butter in large frying pan; place in zuchs in a single layer; add water to halfway up the sides; cover
- cook over gentle heat for 20 minutes, basting occasionally; add more water if nec.
- when zucs are tender, remove to a serving dish; save 1/2 cup of the liquid

SAUCE: beat 2 egg yolks and juice of 1 lemon together in a small saucepan; add some of the hot cooking liquid from the zucs; cook over gentle heat, whisking, till slightly thickened; strain & pour over zucs

I was thinking of trying this with my pattypan squash --- would be pretty!

Cheers,

Zabby

Thanks for the recipe! Some of the stuff I don't have (cheese!) and I'm not going out, but I'll improvise with what I do have and it should turn out fine. Yesterday I ate the first Early Girl tomato. So good, it didn't even need salt.

My beans are climbing upholstery thread! The day I was ready to take care of the stringing up, it was all I could find in my apt. to use. It works. I tied it to the railing and ran it up to the eaves and tied it to nails or hooks, whichever was already there. I did put a few small nails up where there wasn't anything else. I now have baby beans showing up! The beans climb up just fine but they only want to go up so I have to take the tips of the vines and move them horizontally along the threads. I learned from this that it makes sense to try to move them toward the sun rather than away from it. Obvious now, I should have realized it before I started.

What! A ripe full-sized tomato!!!! I'm SOOOO jealous. Still only a meagre trickle of cherries & grapes here.

Zabby

I enjoy walking thru the garden in the AM to enjoy the open flowers - with a little tickle!

Sometimes I just pollinate one kind of flower at a time, or else I have to remember which kind of pollen I've got on a particular finger! To help remember which finger goes in to tickle each type of flower, I use a simple size system. The long middle finger only tickles the innards of the largest squash & melon/pumpkin blooms. Pointy finger goes in the next smaller/medium blooms - likely to be cukes, summer squash etc. size blooms. Pinkies are for tomato blooms. That way I can move thru the garden pretty quickly and don't have to wait so long to start seeing fruit.

Harvest of lemon cukes and summer squash begins for me this week - and peas, beans and greens have been going strong for awhile now. I have a few people scheduled for Aug and Sept to help with canning - for my first time - as more than 40 tomato plants are fruiting and lots more were set in last week. At frost my sunroom will be JAMMED with buckets full of ripening plants...all the way to Xmas. (I'm counting on an Indian summer - and still seeding stuff - and just can't stop! Somebody help me! LOL!)

pdxJules - newbie Urban Farmer

Warning - if tickle-Pollinating blooms with fingers - look in the face of each flower first - I got stung this week when i was looking for the next flower instead of focusing on one at a time. Yee-owie!

Folks are enjoying the Lemon Cukes I'm sharing. And 10 healthy pumpkins are nearly orange now already - Tickling gave me more & earlier than I would've had otherwise, IMO.

I'm new to the board. Very much fun, thank you all. I'm a rural gardener and this year I've been crossing different varieties of squash. I grow zukes, scallops, butternut and acorn. I've used tissue and twist ties to isolate the female flower and when the flower opens I pollinate it with a different variety. I have 12 different crosses. If anyone would be interested in some seeds, e-mail me. I've been told the next generation will be unique and interesting. I'm not selling these, but I will have more seeds than I can grow. I'd love to have some other vegetable lovers grow some and let me know what comes up. The seeds will be available later this fall, just send me an address and e-mail, so we can stay in touch, and I'll stand the postage for the seeds. Happy Gardening ... kieferz28

What a pleasure in my first year of serious veggie gardening - all from seed - to have friends call me with dinner inviations becuase they know I'll make something fresh from the garden!

My pal Loyd and I joined forces and made a huge Horiataki Salad (which uses lots of Cucumber and tomatoes, and NO leaf lettuce) with what I grew, including tomatoes, celery, mint, oregano. My tender yellow squash were a nice addition to the Horiataki. Loyd added the lemon, olive oil, Feta, Green Pepper and Walla Walla Sweet onion. I snuck in an apple from a weekend gleaning mission in the Oregon Countryside.

For appetizers and dinner extras, make - or visit a European/Greek Market - for Hummus, Tatziki (salt and drain shredded cukes and then blend with drained yogurt, garlic and lemon), Pita or Greek bread, stuffed grape leaves, Kalamata Olives, Sheep Feta (highest in Omega 3 fatty acids of the cheeses)

Someone can also cook Spanikopita - there the many recipies on the web. It's a great way to use your garden Spinach and garic, and enjoy the Olympics.

Have someone pick up some Cava Boutari, Cambas, Santa Laura or other good Greek Wine - and you have an Olympic feast! Flaming Kasseri, Ouzo and Metaxa really are OPTIONAL after all this! Save that for Greek Independence day or the Olympic victory celebration - hosted by a friend
with large screen ot HDTV. Yiamas!

Enjoyed cooking with Cukes so much last summer, I've got seedlings going for 3 early varieties - Spacemaster, pickle and a sweet slicing cuke. Soaked seed, & used the jiffy tray while peat was still warm. They were up in 4 days!
(Only plant one per expanded pellet or you'll need to separate the siblings early - and the another medium so early...they are looking dormant)

I've been sharing extras with lots of other gardeners - especially newbies from Craigslist.com or my local FreeCycle (scan Yahoo Groups for your area)
- and people who shared stuff with me from last year's garden definetly are getting theirs too! If someone is in the Portland area - come get some of my extra seed.

Perfect rainy weather for Winter Sowing now...altho I prefer to keep cukes indoors most of the time unless nights are warm, with the peppers, basil & tomato babies. Last month my cuke seedlings were outside alot. Consequently the cuke-kids look hardy, stems are strong, and ready to rumble, even though still short.

I predict they'll produce by early July and go all summer!
Am making Tatziki today with those tasteles guys from the store. Extra garlic and parsley will be the fix. And I'll use it as a dressing on some spicy mustard greens...currently the showiest thing in my late winter garden. The greens will be shaded by June with happy Cukes.