My cukes are getting SO big!!!

Wow...I'm so proud....like a new momma

here's another

and another....there are plenty more...but it's hard to get piks of them and I don't want to walk in my garden unless necessary!!!

Nice cukes! Mmmm...fresh cucumber with salt and vinegar. I'm getting hungry!

Yum!!! So am I. I only wish I grew some lettuce so that I could have my own salad with all my own veggies!!!!

Looks good Noob. I hope mine gets more than one. *LOL* DH and I fight over the tomatoes (we only get a few at a time) so now I guess we can add the cukes to it too

I just picked....well, Adrianna and Aaron just picked three more yesterday!

If mine don't work out I'll plant some again in Sep along with my radishes and bush beans.

Nice lookin' cukes! What kind are they? I'm growing Longfellow. Good luck -

Flip

Ummm.... I have to look at the sign and see.

they are called straight eights

They look nice.
How many straight eights did you plant? Are you getting all these cukes from just one plant?
I have 3 plants and got only 3 from one (english) 1 from one (diva) and none from armenian so far!

tmm

I actually have nine cuke plants and they each have about 6 or 7 (that I can see) cukes growing and more on the way!!!!

noobie,

Wow. That is GREAT! I wish mine were doing as well as yours. I checked your city and it looks like your average high is over 10 degrees higher than my city, so hopefully once the weather gets even warmer, I will start getting more fruit.

tmm

I hate to jump in here, but I wanted to say that this year we've been in the low to mid 80's most days, and have tons of cukes. In fact, we're having to make cuke soup to use them up! I noticed that the cukes in the picture are on the ground. We use two 6' long wooden trellises and connect them at the top so they look like a teepee. They just lay together with no rope or anything. Anyway, the cuke plants grow up the trellises and the cukes hang down while they ripen. I don't know if that makes a difference or not, with all the air circulation, but we do have tons of cukes every year.

Mine are half trellised, half not, and bearing like crazy. Nice cukes, noobie!

Thanks!!!!! :)

How do I know when they are ready to be picked?

Straight 8s can be picked anytime you like; I don't let them get over 10 inches. Good for slicing and pickling. I just made pickles of them (and a couple other varieties) today. yum...

where do you buy the pickling stuff from?

Wal-Mart here has it. Also grocery stores sometimes do..

Depends what kind of pickles you want to make. Mostly it's things you have already: vinegar, water (use distilled if yours is really hard), fresh spices. If you're not growing dill with your pickles, try next year. It grows like crazy, is a good companion plant, and makes your cucumber row smell great. Grocery stores or some permanent farmers markets carry pickling salt and Ball jars (so does Walmart). You can use grape leaves to make the pickles crisp. I'd check out a book at the library about pickling or just about canning and preserving for more info. In the pickles I made yesterday, I put a head of dill, a clove, a grap leaf, two peppercorns, and two cloves of garlic. Then the brine/vinegar solution.

An excuse to go to the library!!!! Perfect! The kids and I LOVE to go...they know us by name there. Thanks for sharing, Zeppy. I am looking forward to making my own pickles and having my own cukes in my salad!!!

Look for Linda Ziedrich's book, _The Joy of Pickling_. Her directions are clear, and she'll get you interested in picking things you never considered! She says cherry leaves work as well as grape leaves for making pickles crisper, and some folks even add a couple of oak leaves to the jar. She also has a "low temperature pasteurization method" that seems to result in crispier cukes than a traditional boiling water bath.

Wal-Mart is the cheapest place around here for canning jars, lids, etc.

Here's a picture of my pickling cucumbers (Gurney's Burpless Hybrid). I've picked a dozen nice ones in the last few days, and they're definitely about to go to town with lots of little baby ones on the vines! I have a couple of plants of 'Straight 8' but have come to like the "picklers" for all purposes, including fresh eating in salads and sandwiches.

I will do just that! So what's a good length to pick them? There's one out there that I'm just itching to pick!

You can pick them any time you want, but if you wait you will get more cucumber. I say, if you're dying to taste one, go ahead!

I generally pick 'Straight 8' cukes between 8 & 10 inches long. If the cuke looks like it's starting to get fat, then I pick it quick before the seed cavity gets big (I like them better before they get seedy).... sometimes that happens at a smaller size than usual. My FIL grows his 'Straight 8' cukes up against a chain link fence, and he says that letting them dangle down lets them get very long (12 inches or more) while staying skinny (with few seeds). But if a dangling one starts touching the ground, it quickly gets fat and seedy. So there's definitely something to the idea of trellising the bigger cukes.

Yeah...the ones that have climbed the trellis are definitely skinnier than the ones that decided not to climb. I will measure the one that I want to pick. But I think I'll start picking them at 8 inches....after all, they are straight eights!!!! :)

LOL! I like your logic!!

;o)