Archives for Growing cucumbers category
Posted on Feb 04, 2010 under Growing cucumbers |
A greenhouse is designed to allow light to come in from all sides, provide sufficient warmth for plants and maintain a consistent level of moisture. Theoretically, a greenhouse is providing conditions that can’t be provided elsewhere, making it possible to grow things all year around. Winterizing a greenhouse will ensure that plants are protected and that the greenhouse is safe from any potential weather related problems.
There are a multitude of reasons for which any type of greenhouse can be used. For people who live in climates where winters are harsh and where hard freezes are a constant problem, it is even more important that everything that is done to prepare the greenhouse for winter be done with the utmost thoroughness.
Areas where the winter temperatures are normally somewhat temperate are not always exempt from freezes. Taking precautions to protect the greenhouse and the plants within it are just as important here. Advance planning can mean the difference between a greenhouse that survives inclement weather and one that doesn’t.
Soft sided greenhouses or those with plastic coverings don’t provide much protection for plants in climates that are not very temperate or tropical. Remove plants from these greenhouses and take them indoors for proper protection.
To winterize and protect a framed and glazed freestanding greenhouse, here is a list of things that can be done.
CLEAN GREENHOUSE THOROUGHLY:
*Unless the greenhouse is heated and the temperatures will not dip below 60 degrees Fahrenheit, all plants that won’t survive should be removed.
*Many food crops, including vegetables such as cucumbers and tomatoes won’t set fruits if the temperatures dip below 60 for a low. Remove these vegetables.
* Get rid of leaves, dead foliage, pots (whether empty or full of soil,) any type of container that isn’t needed and anything else that could be a hiding place for insects and pests.
* Compost everything except diseased plants and the soil they grew in. Dispose of those things properly.
* Wash down all benches. If there were any diseased plants in the greenhouse, disinfect the surfaces with which they may have come into contact. Wash down the glazing and the framing of the greenhouse. If there is any polycarbonate glazing, be sure to wash that with the grain. This will conceal any scratching.
* If any type of shading materials were used, they should be removed or washed off. Clean any glass, fiber glass or
Related Blogs
Posted on Jan 31, 2010 under Growing cucumbers |
Who doesn’t love fresh produce from their own vegetable garden? Many people would rather grow their own vegetables for a variety of reasons. In this article we will cover vegetable gardening tips, how to grow tomatoes, and the vegetable garden lay out.
Let’s start with the layout. Since both tomatoes and corn can grow rather tall it’s smart to plant them towards the back or off to one side so you don’t have to worry about walking on the smaller vegetable plants. Green beans should be planted towards the front of the garden as they are planted very shallow and are very delicate plants. Cucumbers are planted in big hills so best planted along the back of a fence or on last row of the garden.
The most common and easy vegetables to grow and plant are: tomatoes, corn, green beans, and cucumbers. Let’s discuss how to plant tomatoes. First you will need to select your tomatoe plants from a garden store. You want shorter plants that bush out instead of tall ones. The shorter wider plants will produce more tomatoes. Next you will need to dig a hole about 4-6 inches deep or until most of stem is in ground. Next cover up w/ soil around the plant. Plant the tomatoes about a foot apart.
Next, lets discuss how to plant the green beans. Green beans only need to be planted about 1/4 inch in the ground so make a small indention in ground using a line and two sticks will insure a straight row. Place 2-3 seeds about six inches apart. Lightly push soil over top of seeds. When the beans sprout out of the ground prune to one plant per six inches. Corn is planted much the same way but you want short rows planted close together so the corn can pollinate.
Your vegetable garden needs to have good soil in order to thrive. Now I will give you some vegetable gardening tips to help you along. If your soil quality is low and doesn’t drain well you will probably want to fertilize it a few weeks before planting. You can buy store bought fertilizer or you can use manure from plant eating animals. Another great thing to increase your vegetable garden soil is using compost either store bought or home made.
Another vegetable garden tip is to make sure your plants are watered at least once a week during dry hot weather. You will also want to check for insects and apply insecticide if needed just make sure to wash produce well before eating.
This concludes my article and I hope you enjoy your garden and having your own produce.
Related Blogs
- Related Blogs on Delicate Plants
Posted on Jan 30, 2010 under Growing cucumbers |
It’s not exactly fast food. It could take most of the summer to get your salad (which seems to be roughly the speed of most pizza places) but it is well worth the wait. With only the most rudimentary of tools, a little space in the back yards, and some elbow grease, anybody can have a truly fresh salad.
Gardening is a rewarding hobby. Flower growers can see the beauty of their labors all summer long. The vegetable growers also get a great reward. They can hear the fresh crunch of home-grown lettuce and taste the mouth-watering tomato that just came off the vine minutes before you tasted it.
A gardener can grow his own salad, making it as simple or complicated as he would like. As with any salad the first thing he starts with is the lettuce. Any true vegetable aficionado will tell you that there is no such thing as lettuce. The leafy salad staple comes in a variety of tastes, shapes, sizes, and colors. Gardeners can grow iceberg lettuce (the normal kind you find in the grocery store), butterhead, romaine, or countless other lettuces. The produce section of the supermarket generally doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the types of lettuces out there. It’s best just to check what grows in your area and plant whatever looks good.
Next on the salad is the tomato – the ripe, red wedges add visual appeal as well as deep flavor. Tomatoes tend to be robust plants and can grow in a variety of climates. Its best to stake them to make sure that the tomatoes do not touch the ground. This can be anything from a simple wooden stake to an elaborate metal cage. Keep an eye on them, though. They’ll sprout up and ripen seemingly overnight. Pick them when they are plump and red, slice them into sections, and enjoy!
To add some extra color to the salad, not to mention some Vitamin A for good eyesight, shave some fresh carrots over the salad, or chop them into round pieces. The carrot is another hearty vegetable. Unlike the tomato, the carrot grows into the ground, thus it grows better in loose soil. When you are ready to make your fresh salad, simply go to the ground and pull out any carrot bigger than your finger. Slice it up and you are ready to eat!
One of the last things to add to a fresh grown salad is a few cucumber slices. Cucumbers are fast-growing plants – most varieties are ready to pick in 2 months. When you are ready for your salad, go to the garden and pull one of these off the vine, clean it, slice it and eat it.
A simple hobby is turned into a delicious salad – with its crisp greens, ripe tomatoes, crunchy carrots, and brisk cucumbers. And they eat their fresh home-grown salads, gardeners can definitely enjoy the fruits … er … vegetables of their labors.
Posted on Jan 25, 2010 under Growing cucumbers |
Growing your own vegetables can be a very delicious experience, hobby, or necessity. There are many common types of vegetable gardens to choose from. Some of the more common vegetables are cucumbers, squash, potatoes, corn, green beans, onions, lettuce, cabbage, carrots, and peppers. What you can grow depends on where you live and what you like. Keep in mind though that there are many charities that will gladly take fresh veggie donations so planting an extra row of goodies could help a hungry family.
The most common vegetable of all is the tomato although some people consider it to be a fruit. Tomatoes go well with many dishes, are great fried green, and make a wonderful addition to any vegetable garden. If you don’t know how to grow tomatoes, don’t let that stop you. Tomatoes are actually one of the simplest vegetables to grow and require little upkeep. You just need to follow basic gardening techniques as you would with any other vegetable.
If you are growing your vegetables from seed, read the package and follow the directions. For the novice gardener, a great option is starting a kitchen garden. All you need is a little potting soil and some pots. Plant the seeds deep enough in the soil that the roots can grow firmly. When the seeds have turned into plants you can transform them outdoors.
Before starting the vegetable gardening experience outdoors, think about what you want to grow and where you will grow it. Find a place that will get plenty of sun so that your vegetables will get the needed six hours or more of sunlight a day. Find the most effective way to plant your veggies so that they will grow to their full potential.
There are a few vegetable gardening tips that you should follow. Your dirt is important. Make sure that your soil is well tilled, fertile, and free of rocks, roots or other items that can hinder the growth of your vegetable garden. Once you have tilled your land, let it sit for a while and then you can set off your rows.
Because your garden will need a lot of water for your plants grow, you need to make sure that it drains well. Vegetables can and will drown or rot in soggy soil. Water your vegetables as needed when the sun goes down if rain is not plentiful in your area. Avoid over-watering your vegetables to prevent damage to them.
When planting vegetables it is important to leave extra space between the rows so that you can walk through comfortably and to allow your vegetable plants plenty of room to grow and
Posted on Jan 25, 2010 under Growing cucumbers |
Growing up I remember the bowl of cucumbers and onions that was usually available to grab from in the refrigerator. It was the first thing one would grab while contemplating the contents in hope of finding something good to eat.
My mom loved cucumber sandwiches. Perhaps it was the British in her or the Irish. All I knew was she was a dead ringer for Elizabeth II and even to this day I cannot look at a picture of the queen without seeing mom. Over the years, they have even had the same hair styles. According to rumor, there is a relation.
Here is the recipe my mom liked to use.
4 slices thin bread (crust removed)
soft butter
1 cucumber, seeded and thinly sliced
mayonnaise
salt and pepper to taste
Spread butter on one side of each piece of bread. Mix cucumber with mayonnaise and spread on two slices of bread. Season as desired. Top with bread. Makes 2 sandwiches.
Cool, quick and the perfect nibble for teas or summer afternoons.
Related Blogs
- Related Blogs on Bread Crust
- Related Blogs on Bread Mix
- Related Blogs on Cucumber Sandwiches
Posted on Jan 21, 2010 under Growing cucumbers |
I planted my vegetables, for a few
years exactly where I wanted ‘em
to be planted. Said to myself: if I
had to make a living and nothing
grows, no one needs to point
fingers, or be anonymous; so,
it’s my hoe, my garden—, I’ll clean
the scraps up, I’ve been at that so
long I can’t possibly wear my hands
down (so I told myself). All my life
I’ve been at it: they lay it down, I
pick it up; weedin’ with a hoe-blade
isn’t easy. You try it, see!
As I stood—day after day—looking
out my kitchen window, watching
him plant, and hoe, and water, and
the cucumbers grow, (God knows
what for) —He said those vegetables,
cucumbers he done planted would
grow fat, and huge—, and they did.
He could have shown me a few
things about planting, hoeing and
growing (back then); things I never
thought of, but I just wanted some
of those cucumbers. Funny, when
we’re young. Now looking back I
can still see that old farmer looking
over his shoulder at me: smirking.See Dennis’ web site: http://dennissiluk.tripod.com
Related Blogs
Posted on Jan 20, 2010 under Growing cucumbers |
It’s funny how certain simple acts conjure up forgotten childhood memories. For most of my life I had lived in apartments and had completely forgotten what it was like to work a garden. However, at the age of twenty-four my boyfriend and I had moved into a 500 square foot house on a triple corner lot in South West Portland. I watched him as he cut out pieces of sod from the back yard, amended the soil with mushroom compost and other organic matter. The sweat dripped off from the tip of his nose and just like that it came rushing back from some old storage room in my brain. Crystal clear gardening memory from my childhood came rushing back as if it were taking place right then. I could see my dad moving dirt, tilling, digging, and planting. I remember watching my dad, he would work so hard in the Southern Californian sun that sweat dripped from the end of his nose, just like Josh! His hands were calloused, he had a farmer’s tan, but the pay off when he was done, glorious! He had created a paradise for his family! There was fresh sod that was the perfect shade of green and felt so good under bare feet, bright orange with a hint of purple birds of paradise, beautiful gladiolas in all sorts of colors, passion vine with these beautiful and unusual flowers that grew up a large white trellis along our fence. To top it off he somehow he had placed large rocks every here in there, one of them lay length wise under an avocado tree making the perfect bench as the rock was warm but the tree provided shade making it the perfect resting area for sleepy kids or cats. My dad had made a small four foot by four foot square patch for my brothers and I to plant our own garden. We stood watching wide eyed as my dad pulled out several seed packets consisting of: Sunflowers, Sweet peas, and cucumbers. Right then the act of gardening became more than just gardening, more than just a way for us kids to interact with our dad, it had become a spiritual act for my brothers and me, something that I in my early twenties had lost. As I sit here today I can practically smell the freshly dug earth, I can feel the cool dirt between my fingers and toes! The careful placing of the seeds in an order so that the sweet peas didn’t over take and the sunflowers wouldn’t overshadow the others. I remember how we lined the sunflowers at the back, then the sweet peas, then the cucumbers. My dad showed us how to make trellises from leftover branches and twine so that the sweet peas could grow up, explaining
Posted on Jan 18, 2010 under Growing cucumbers |
Given the big and revolutionary advances made by science in poor soil cultivation studies, there’s no wonder that hydroponics vegetable greenhouses are no longer a mere experiment. The vegetables that are usually grown in greenhouses are cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce. However, normal agricultural laws apply to simple cases; yet what should be done in the case of regions or even entire countries where soil is not proper for vegetable cultivation? The option to make agriculture and produce fresh fruits and vegetables independent of soil condition seemed a beautiful and very remote dream a few decades ago. Now it is a scientific success and a dream come true.
Basic guidelines for hydroponics vegetable greenhouses
Growing vegetables the hydroponic way may not seem very easy when you’re a newbie in the field. Most business owners who have come to develop hydroponics vegetable greenhouses have all started from the first level, using soilless plant growing on a very small scale. The basics of the system lie in the use of reservoirs filled with nutrient solutions properly oxygenated, where plants grow naturally.
Instead of using soil as the environment to supply for the quantity of minerals necessary for normal development, your vegetables will actually process nourishing substances directly from the water in the tanks. If you look over step-by-step home made hydroponic systems you’ll get a better understanding of the way the process works.
Hydroponics vegetable greenhouses may sometimes be the only solution for people in areas with poor soil to actually eat fresh vegetables. The other more expensive solution to their problem would be the importing of products from other places. However, mention should be made that a soilless greenhouse is not a valid business idea in an area that has good cultivation soil.
No alternative greenhouse can actually compete with mother nature in providing the best crops. Hydroponics vegetable greenhouses are one hundred percent profitable in harsh climate conditions. Otherwise they’re just one whimsical investment.
Special conditions
Among the special items necessary for a hydroponics vegetable greenhouse we should definitely mention the special lighting devices in case you can’t profit from natural sun light. For instance those parts in the countries beyond the polar circles, where nights last for six months a year, will need artificial lighting for sure.
Even when you choose the lamps for your revolutionary greenhouse, it would be best to ask the advice of an expert, particularly since some vegetables require more light than others. Changes may also appear in terms of light quality as well. All in all, hydroponics vegetable greenhouses are ambitious, yet highly rewarding projects that require professional commitment and considerable financial investment.
Related Blogs
- Related Blogs on Agricultural Laws
Posted on Jan 17, 2010 under Growing cucumbers |
Cucumber mosaic virus invades cells of healthy seedling plants as well as matured plantings. This virus does not limit itself to only cucumbers as the name implies. This disease affects many different vegetable and herb varieties as well as ornamental flower groups. Tomatoes, peppers, melons, squash, beets, celery, parsley, dill, parsnip as well as petunias, hyacinth, geraniums, marigolds, tulips, and snapdragons are all examples of a wide range of susceptible Cucumber mosaic virus victims.
Plants may become infected at any point during their growing season from emergence to maturity. The first signs of the disease will be evident by downward curling and twisting leaves. Many leaves will develop a mottling or mosaic pattern of light and dark green or yellow designs. The fruit produced will be stunted and covered with bumpy skins. In cucumbers, the skins could appear white. As the virus invades the cells of the plant, growth will be greatly reduced with very few flowers, runners or fruit. What little fruit is produced may have a very bitter taste.
Cucumber mosaic virus is passed on from plant to plant mostly due to aphids which feed on infected plants, travel to healthy plants and transfer the virus when they munch the leaves, stems or flowers. Gardeners themselves can unknowingly enable the virus to spread by their hands or garden utensils after coming in contact with a diseased plant. While the virus cannot survive in soil without plants to feed on, it latches on to weeds especially perennial weeds and continues to thrive even over winter until the next crops of healthy plantings emerge.
Once a plant has been affected by this disease, there is nothing to be done to save the plant. At the first sign of the virus, the plant needs to be pulled up and destroyed to try to break the cycle of other plantings being at risk. Good garden hygiene is basically your greatest defense against this virus. While it is virtually impossible to get rid of aphids or all weeds in surrounding areas of your garden to prevent this virus from entering your garden space, there are a few tips you may want to try.
* Remove infected plants at the first sign of infection and destroy. Do not compost these plants. Wash hands with soap and water after handling diseased plants. Clean your garden utensils thoroughly with bleach.
* Do not plant near hedges, ditch banks, weedy, brushy or wooded areas. Try to have a distance of at least 100 yards between your planting and surrounding woods or weeds. Clover, catnip, dandelions, milkweed, chickweeds as well as other perennial weeds provide feeding grounds for the virus.
* Try to eliminate all weeds surrounding your garden beds. Also try to not plant vegetables close to plants susceptible to aphid populations, like shrubs or flower beds.
* Planting early in the season may help before aphid populations emerge. Also if possible plant susceptible vegetables close to corn plants which grow taller and are generally aphid resistant. Wheat, on the other hand, attracts aphids so planting a border crop of wheat around your garden could stave off the virus while feeding the hungry aphids.
* Fungicides do not control this virus. Weekly applications of mineral oil could help control the aphid population. Crop rotation which is a good practice for other garden problems will not prevent the infection of this virus without using other suggested means.
* Seeds are not affected, but try to purchase seedling plants from greenhouses that isolate their vegetable plants from flower seedling plants.
Related Blogs
- Related Blogs on Bitter Taste
Posted on Jan 12, 2010 under Growing cucumbers |
During the summer months we grow our own garden and cucumber sandwiches are a favorite in my family. I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as my kids do.
CUCUMBER SANDWICHES
1 pkg. refrigerated French loaf bread
Place the refrigerated loaf bread on a cookie sheet that has been lightly coated with cooking spray. Bake according to package directions. Remove from oven and let cool completely. Then cut into 24 slices.
Spread:
1/2 c. mayonnaise
1 pkg. dry Italian mustard
1 small pkg. cream cheese, softened
1 large cucumber
1. Mix together the mayonnaise, dry mustard and cream cheese. Spread on 12 of the bread slices.
2. Cut the cucumber into round slices and place on top of the spread. Cover with another slice of bread. Refrigerate covered until served.
![2442720 b645e29d08 t Smirking Cucumbers [a Poem]](http://farm1.static.flickr.com/3/2442720_b645e29d08_t.jpg "Smirking Cucumbers [a Poem]")
