I would start one group as early as possible, then another one later in the summer. Look at the days to maturity of the type you want, find the date of your first killing frost, count backward and start a couple of weeks before then.

Mike

To further 'wordwiz's thoughts. Search for short season plants, 50-60 day. Short season tomatoes are mostly 6 oz. or less or cherries. Short day squash are most bush type. Google each topic as I don't think you will find them in stores as i haven't found any in s. NM.

Oh!! Day length is determined by time from transplanting, outdoors, to the beginning of fruit harvest.

Look into the "Armenian Cucumber"

It's a lot (heck, it is) a lot like those "English Cukes" "Greenhouse Cukes"...those long somewhat ribbed cukes...I've seen them individually wrapped in grocery stores.

They will grow and fruit any place/time melons will...that means mid-summer cukes even in the thick of summer. They're not really cukes, they're melons, but they taste/look-on-inside like cukes...and they're "burpless" + non-bitter.

They will also grow to about 1-3' (yes, feet) long, but you want to get to them around the 8-16" range depending on preference.

Oops...

I did incomplete editing on that "It's a lot (heck, it is) a lot like those"

i meant to say "It's a lot like those..."

English cukes are not Armenian cukes, though I've seen Armenian cukes sold as them.

They are both very similar...enough so that you probably couldn't tell them apart in a taste test.

Are you asking if cucumbers set fruit during the hottest part of the summer heat? This year will my first cucumbers since Katrina.

I'm almost certain my Burpless cukes would produce right through the hottest part of the growing season. Getting old and, forgetting stuff, is lousy! If I remember correctly, I'd start another batch of cucumbers about 1 month after planting the first bunch. This second planting would last till the first cold snap.

The Asparagus bean, also called Yardlong, is a vegetable that LOVES the heat! My Oriental-type eggplants and melons always enjoyed the hot summer months.

Plants like swiss chard and others can be helped through the heat by growing them in some shade. But, I don't think cucumbers would benefit from being grown in the shade.

My son and a neighbor have started many different vegetable seeds in some of my not-quite-finished stable litter compost and, the seedlings are doing fine. If it's not hurting little tender seedlings, I can't imagine finished compost harming well established seedlings.

Here is a link to a site for some more heat loving vegetables;

http://www.lsuagcenter.com/news_archive/2006/may/get_it_growing/high+temperatures+stresses+some+vegetables+others+like+it+hot.htm

Trellising will help the cukes last longer, too. I guess it's the shade on each side half a day? Or the cool breezes circulating? Dunno, but they always look sooooooo much better and produce so much more when I get them up off the ground.

@nc-crn Wed, Mar 18, 09 at 21:22 "Look into the "Armenian Cucumber" -- these would thrive and produce all summer in Phoenix. They are not too unlike the milder of the more common 'cucumber'.

I have planted the burpless "Armenian" and they did fine in the middle of our summer near the Texas coast. We have lots of weeds down our way and I had to go offshore for two weeks. I couldn't see the cucumbers but when I started pulling weeds I found the cucumbers doing fine until I pulled their vine by accident. So I was left with enjoying those fruits that were on the vine at this time.

My cucumbers look so bad they look to be sunburned to me they were planted in ground in full sun the first true leaf looks fried some are getting second set of leafs think they will pull throw this they really just look like they either getting to much sun.Try to get a pic tomorrow