Now is the time to start thinking about which delicious vegetables you want to grow in your garden. Ted and Rho will go over all the possibilities with you in this class.
Spring Vegetables
These vegetables don't mind the cold and can be planted from seed in February. They may grow slowly, but as weather warms they will grow more quickly. Lettuce, Swiss Chard, arugula, mustard greens, and other leafy greens do well. Radishes, beets, carrots, turnips, and happy during this time as well. However, by late spring/early summer, many of these plants can't take the heat and may “bolt,” sending up flower stalks that the bees enjoy.
Summer Vegetables
You can plant these vegetables from seed or transplant in late March. They prefer warm weather and may “sulk” and grow very slowly if you plant them too early. These vegetables include melons, squash, winter squash, corn, tomatoes, and cucumbers.
Hope to “see” you there!
Where*: On Zoom. You will receive a link the morning of the class.
When: Tuesday, February 22, 2022 6:00-7:30 p.m.
Cost: Free
Register at: http://ucanr.edu/spring/veg/2022
Instructors: Master Gardeners Rho Yare and Ted Hawkins
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By Denise Seghesio Levine, UC Master Gardener of Napa County
Last year my husband discovered the joy of making cucumber pickles. He put fresh cucumbers in a clean jar with dill, bay and garlic from the garden, pure salt, spring water and a few grape leaves to keep them crisp, and one week later we had amazing pickles. This year he decided he wanted to make a lot of pickles, and therefore we needed to grow a lot of cucumbers.
With two large cucumber beds and overflow seedlings in 5-gallon pots, we have probably 150 cucumber plants feeding my husband's pickle obsession.
We wanted the best cucumbers for pickles, but we wanted flavorful cucumbers for fresh use as well. After perusing my seed collection and many seed catalogs, we made our selections.
Parisian Pickling from Seed Savers (seedsavers.org) seemed a logical choice. Also called Improved Bourbonne, this prickly little dark green cucumber is picked tiny for making gherkins and cornichons, the traditional adornment to pâté and charcuterie plates. Or you can harvest later for larger dill pickles. With the little prickles scrubbed off, Parisian Pickling also makes a perfectly fine slicing cucumber for eating fresh.
Seed Savers had another intriguing pickling cucumber. The Edmonson cucumber is open pollinated (which means you can save the seed and it will grow true) and grows to about four inches. Solid and blocky, the Edmonson never turns green, but matures from white to yellow and finally to a deep orange-red. Even when large and colorful, the Edmonson is said to be crisp and sweet. By the time these cucumbers start to color they are eight to nine inches long. They are the whales of our cucumber collection.
Light pale green and beautifully fluted, Armenian cucumbers are actually part of the muskmelon family. If allowed to sprawl on the ground, they tend to twist and circle, but if trellised up a fence or pole Armenian cucumbers behave beautifully and grow straight. An impressive 24 inches is not unusual for these cucumbers, but they are better if harvested at about 18 inches when the flesh is still solid and they have fewer seeds. I have read that Armenian cucumbers can get bitter, but I have never experienced that.
Lemon cucumbers were developed by selecting for roundness and yellow color. They will turn a deep lemon yellow, but for best flavor and texture should be harvested when they are between golf-ball and tennis-ball size and still a light green. At this size they don't need peeling. Lemon cukes do well in garden beds, trellised up fences or in pots with a trellis or other support.
Bushy cucumbers, an early determinate variety that only stretch five feet in each direction, look like traditional cucumbers with dark bumpy skin. These were the first to produce for me and seemed to grow overnight. Straight 8's, a smooth, conventional-looking cucumber rounded out the selection.
Cucumber plants produce male blossoms first; several weeks later the female flowers appear. When bees find both in bloom, baby cucumbers begin to appear. All varieties do best if harvested early and often.
Start seeds in fresh potting soil and rotate your cucumber planting sites every year to avoid the buildup of soil-borne pests and diseases. Plant cucumber seeds in 4-inch pots in early spring so you'll have healthy seedlings ready to transplant when the weather warms. Plenty of compost and a handful of worm castings in garden beds provide these heavy feeders the nutrients they need to yield abundantly through the summer. When transplanting, space seedlings according to packet directions. If those little cucumber beetles that look like green lady bugs show up, squish them.
Cucumbers do well in 5-gallon pots if staked. They need daily watering and steady feeding since the roots are confined and depend on you for their nutrients and water. You can successfully grow a single cucumber plant of any type on a deck or patio with morning sun. Harvested often, this single plant will supply plenty of cucumbers for salads, soups and pickles. Some important advice: Always taste a small piece of a cucumber before adding the rest to a salad or soup. One bitter cucumber can ruin an entire dish.
By now you might be wondering what my husband and I are doing with all our cucumbers. Having prepared an abundance of pickles we have branched out, replacing our old juicer with a lighter, quieter model. Instead of drinking water, we mostly drink cucumber juice. Cucumbers are high in silica and nourish hair, nails and skin, so whether we juice them with peaches, tomatoes or celery, we feel virtuous. We still use pure water to make our morning coffee, but after that, all bets are off.
Food Growing Forum: Join Napa County Master Gardeners on Sunday, August 30, from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m., for a free Zoom discussion on “Growing Winter Vegetables.” This forum on food growing will continue monthly on the last Sunday of every month, with different topics every time. To receive the Zoom link for the August 30 forum, register at http://ucanr.edu/FoodGrowingForum2020.
The UC Master Gardeners of Napa County are volunteers who provide University of California research-based information on home gardening. To find out more about home gardening or upcoming programs, visit the Master Gardener website (napamg.ucanr.edu). Our office is temporarily closed but we are answering questions remotely and by email. Send your gardening questions to mastergardeners@countyofnapa.org or leave a phone message at 707-253-4143 and a Master Gardener will respond shortly.
- Author: David H Alosi
By Denise Levine, U. C. Master Gardener
My dad called me a few weeks ago with a cucumber question. His vines were growing well, looked healthy and had a lot of flowers, but he could see only one tiny cucumber. He had noticed that he doesn’t have a lot of bees this year and thought perhaps that was the problem.
The answer I found to his query was a real surprise. According to the U.C. Davis Research and Information Center, on a normal cucumber plant (Cucumis sativus), the first 10 to 20 flowers are male. For every female flower, which yields the fruit, the plant produces 10 to 20 male flowers.
Before the outnumbered female flower develops into a cucumber, the pollen must be carried from male to female. Normally bees do this job, but other pollinating insects, or even a gardener with a tiny brush, can step in.
How can you identify a female flower? Look for the one with a tiny swollen pickle on the end. That’s the flower that must be pollinated to produce a fruit big enough to slice for your salad.
Plant breeders knew that a vine with more female flowers would produce higher yields. So they bred some new varieties that have a greater proportion of female flowers, and others that produce only females. As a result, some modern varieties bear fruit earlier and have higher yields than “normal” cucumbers. The vines with all-female flowers can be grown in greenhouses without pollination; consequently, the fruit they produce is seedless. If they are pollinated, seeds will form.
Many gardeners complain about bitter cucumbers. Bitterness can be traced to two terpenoid compounds, controlled by two genes. One, a dominant gene, promotes bitterness; the other, a recessive gene, inhibits it.
Bitter compounds are usually concentrated at the cucumber’s stem end, as well as in the skin and just underneath. Contrary to one belief, you can’t affect the bitterness by how you peel the fruit.
The so-called “burpless” cucumbers are slender, long and thin skinned. Through careful plant selection and breeding, most of the bitterness associated with indigestion has been removed. But any cucumber can develop bitterness if the temperature fluctuates more than 20 degrees, if the plant is water stressed, or if the cucumbers are stored near other ripening vegetables after harvest.
Cucumbers come in many varieties, from large slicing varieties for eating fresh, to pickling types, to tiny cornichons. The University of California recommends varieties that do well in our area and are bred for disease resistance and minimal bitterness.
Among pickling cucumbers, the university recommends Pickling, Liberty Hybrid, Saladin, County Fair 83 and two types—Pickle Bush and Pot Luck—that do well in containers.
Slicing types recommended for our area include Dasher 11, Sweet Success, Sweet Slice (burpless) and, for containers, Pot Luck, Salad Bush, Parks Bush Whopper and Spacemaster.
Remember that most cucumber vines are sprawlers, making it difficult to weed or work in the rows without damaging the plants. Consider training the vines on a cage, trellis or fence to keep the fruit off the ground, save space and avoid damage when harvesting. If vines are not trellised, gently roll the vines rather than lifting them when looking for harvestable fruit to avoid destroying the blossoms or kinking the vines.
Avoid growing cucumbers in cool or shady locations, water regularly, and provide ample nutrients.
Harvest cucumbers before they begin to turn yellow. Remove fruits by twisting them and giving a quick snap. This prevents vine damage and results in a clean break.
While many cucumbers have been bred for disease resistance, they can still be plagued by aphids, spider mites, leaf hoppers and mildew. If you suspect you have any of these problems, call or come into the Master Gardener office for information on cucumber culture and advice on solutions.