Growing National Pickling Cucumbers
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Growing National Pickling Cucumbers
from katjaqu on 03/24/2015 07:38 PMI'm just going to tell you how I grow my cucumbers from start to finish.
This has aways worked well for me.
I have really great soil and I rotate my crops so most everything grows pretty well.
After I till the soil I put down a layer of landscaping cloth not plastic to control the weeds. I do this throughout my garden, adding a layer to it every year as needed.
I use garden poles that are about a half an inch in diameter and about four to five feet tall. I got these at Lowe's. They are used for deer fencing and have a green plastic vinyl coating.
I use a section of lightweight wire garden fence about ten feet long and four to five feet high.
Place the posts in the ground through the landscape cloth in a straight line about eighteen inches apart.
Basket weave the wire fencing through the poles.
Secure the fence with cable ties.
Cut a large X into the cloth every ten inches apart on one side of the fence.
Then go around to the other side of the fence and do the same thing, staggering the holes from the cuts on the first side.
I usually put about three seeds in each of the cuts in the cloth and just push them lightly into the soil.
Water lightly for the first couple of days.
As they start to grow I train up and along the fence. They don't usually need string, but I do sometimes use it.
I water my garden with rainwater in the evening when the sun is not hitting on it.
I have a three hundred gallon water tank hooked to the down spout of my garage close to the garden.
I have a hose splitter connected to the tank and run garden hoses off that to different areas of the garden.
This saves a lot of time and money!!
I let some of the vines at one end of the trellis grow to maturity and produce larger yellow cucumbers. I use those to make Old Fashioned Ripe Sweet Pickles from a recipe that I found online.
http://www.cooks.com/recipe/2h7ss0sw/grandmothers-old-fashioned-ripe-sweet-pickles.html
I scoop out the yellow cucumber seeds with my fingers into a large food colander. I rinse them several times with warm water to remove all of the pulp and let them drain in the colander for about an hour before putting them in an aluminum pie plate to dry.
I shake the pie plate several times a day for two weeks to make sure that the seeds dry evenly.
I store my dry seeds in a canning jar with a two piece lid.
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Re: Growing National Pickling Cucumbers
from zackey on 03/26/2015 12:46 AMHow do you secure your landscape cloth to the ground?
Re: Growing National Pickling Cucumbers
from katjaqu on 03/28/2015 11:34 PMHi Maggie,
I use wire landscape pins to hold it down.
I'm sure you could make them out of wire clothes hangers but I didn't think about it until I had given them to Goodwill.
I really wish I had kept them because Lowe's charges a small fortune for them.
What type of bug was it that you had on your squash?
Were they stink bugs? because I spent a lot of time picking them off my zucchini last year.
I would really like to know how to get rid of them.
Re: Growing National Pickling Cucumbers
from zackey on 03/29/2015 07:50 PMI know what you used. I pinned a 12' by 5' landscape cloth with them all by myself when we started the nursery. I can't get down on my knees now to do it. I got rid of al of my wire hangers too. I found out the hard way that wire hangers are a no-no in the south. I had clothes with rust marks on the shoulders because of the dampness here. They are called squash borerers. They bore into the base of the squash and it kills the plant. I read a post recently on GW about stink bugs. The person had a bucket of soapy water next to her tomato plants. It had rotten or bug eaten tomatoes in it. She forgot to empty it. The next day she looked in it and it had lots of dead stink bugs in it. They were attracted to the bad tomatoes. I'm gonna try it this year!
Re: Growing National Pickling Cucumbers
from katjaqu on 03/30/2015 12:48 AMThat's good to know! I'll do that this year. They were really bad last year and I don't want them again.