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Arizona Gardening

Help with cukes and squash

12 years ago

Hi all. I'm starting to get really into veggies, thus far I've had fair success with tomatoes and peppers likely because I love to eat them.

However, the wife wants squash and cucumbers but I've never grown them before and don't care for either... EXCEPT I LOVE pickles! I have a 4'x4'x16" planter I can dedicate to these two veggies. I have some questions:

1. Whats best variety of cukes for pickling?

2. Are these 2 veggies similar in growth periods? Meaning, can I plant in March and get a decent harvest by Mid-June when it gets real hot?

3. Do Home Depot or local nurseries (Mesa) stock decent plant selection or should I start some seeds soon? (I have a set-up in my garage for that)

4. How would you set-up a 4x4 bed for cukes/squash? Spacing, trellised?

Thanks in advance!

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Comments (3)

mikerizzle9
Original Author
12 years ago
... Sorry, and what about squeezing a couple zucchini in that planter? She wants that too. I will give it a shot unless I don't think I'll have room.
lazy_gardens
12 years ago
Mike -
Cucumbers (the real ones) tend to collapse as soon as it gets hot so you are balancing the danger of a late frost with that of early heat waves.

"Armenian" cucumbers, on the other hand love the heat and climb trellises. Trellis the cukes on something sturdy and big. One Armenian cuke plant covered an 8-foot wide section of wall on a trellis, then dropped over the other side of the wall and kept going into the neighbor's yard and my mesquite. The others, about 6 of them, covered a 30-foot arbor and invaded the orange tree.

It has to be STURDY - and you can get one in each cornet of the planter if you make a sturdy trellis for them. The zucchini or summer squash can run out on the ground from the sides of the planters.
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When I grew cucuzzi it "escaped" from the garden, grew up and over the garden fence, and then climbed high up into the nearby trees where, of course, I couldn't reach them in order to pick them while they were a reasonable size. The squash high up in the tree grew quite long. Finally, a neighbor who could see the green "things" hanging from the trees while driving up and down the road asked me why I had so many green tree snakes (a somewhat common native green non-venomous snake is common in our area) hanging upside down from the trees all day long. I guess from the road, the sepent gourds really did look like serpents! In the fall, I pulled the vines and gourds down out of the trees and gave the gourds, which were very hard-shelled and dry by that point, to the dogs to play with. They carried them around, tossed them in the air, chewed on them, etc. The next year, we had cucuzzi growing on the fence around the dog yard, with the plants having sprouted from seeds the dogs scattered around the dog yard while playing with their old, dry, cucuzzi gourds. I had thought I'd harvest and use the cucuzzi but the dogs harvested theirs as squash whenever they felt like it and played with them and ate them. Even my dogs are gardeners, it seems, and one of them likes green tomatoes, so he is banned from the fenced garden.
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bucks
12 years ago
I somewhat agree with lazygardens in that the Armenian Cuke is the best for this area and also the taste. As he knows the Armenian is actually a cantaloupe with a bland taste for a melon, but tasty as a cucumber and oh so crunchy. I do not have issues with the heat getting to my cukes as long as I pick them. Near the end of the season I have more problems with aphids instead. If you want a pickling cumcumber I would go with SR58. There are others of course. I plant either straight 8s or straight 9s for an eating cucumber. You can also plant cucumbers in August and get a fall crop, but it will not be much of a harvest and the cucumbers will be much smaller. I did not feel that it was worth my time, but I had to try it once just like I did with a fall crop of beans. Lazygardens is on the money on the trellis and the squash. Let the squash run on the ground. I find myself that the zukes do best in this heat verses the other types of squash. I mean you can grow them all, but the zukes just do better in the heat. Whatever you do please do everything from seed. Then you know what you are getting.

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