Planting Cucumber

Cucumber is one of the vegetable plants that fascinated me much in the process of planting. My first cuke plant is Cucumber Marketer. It started to bloom about twenty male flowers for about a week or so before the female flowers came out.

At first it sets in only one female flower a day and after about a week, two or three.

First day of blooming - Female Flower

Both Male and Female flowers' prime is only a day. It means a day to produce pollen for the male flowers and a day up for a pollination for the female flowers. If we miss it, it will be too late as it withers and falls.

I had hand-pollinated at least 18 female cukes and at first it seemes that they're starting to swell up but then after a while I noticed that they stopped growing, especially after getting soaked from a downpour or suffered from a sun-scorching day. I then started to move them to a shade during the scorching noon and afternoon in order to protect the pollinated female flowers and the leaves from getting sunburnt.

One day as I was going to pollinate a female flower,  I found this one survived, but only this one which was growing... fast. In days it got this big.

So what happened with the others...?

The growth stalled and they're getting yellow―immaturely.

 And sadly I had to remove them...

 I harvested the cuke after it got about 13 cm long and about 6 cm wide.

It's stout and  fleshy with few seeds but the size and form was not like the one shown in the seeds catalog which is longer and not as stumpy as this was. The taste was a bit bland and not as sweet and crunchy as the local breed. I wonder if it's a little too ripe as I had already seen a little crack on the lower skin.

After several days after the harvest, I got some new blooms and had them pollinated but again only one got succeeded. I wonder why I can't have several cukes succeededly pollinated at the same time? Does the plant automatically abort other baby cukes because it has not enough energy for all of them since I plant it  in  a 4 gallons container? (shoulders shrugged and eyes rolled)

Spring Salad

Lettuce Gourmet Mix

 The most rewarding of gardening is when you can harvest some produce from what you've sown! Finally today, after 32 days from germinating, I could harvest some of these lucious lettuce greens....

With some other organic produce I harvested from my own garden, i.e. green and ripe tomatoes, orange and green sweet peppers, and some basil leaves plus an apple, a carrot (shredded), a handful of borlotti beans, and 2 stalks of green onions that I bought from the market I am going to make spring salad for today.

 I add some cubed chicken breast that I seasoned with worcestershire sauce, fish sauce, soya sauce, and a pinch of black pepper for 10 minutes before I sautéd with a little oil until it's cooked.

As for the dressing, I simply used some lime juice, sugar, salt, olive oil and water. And here is the result! Fresh Spring Salad to add to the delight of lunch in a hot day!