End of the Cucumbers

It looks like my hanging basket cucumber experiment has ended. Over the past few days, a multitude of small dark bugs attacked the remaining plant. As you can see, it didn't survive. Our entire harvest from the hanging basket plants amounted to one cucumber. I don't think I'll try this again next year.

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Vegetable Update

Just a late Summer/early Fall update today on our various container-grown vegetables. The strongest producer at present in the okra. The four original plants are going strong and still putting out a decent number of pods. Over the last week, the two plants that I started later in the Summer have also started bearing. The daily high temperatures are still a bit hot for the tomatoes, but I have one Black Prince on the vine and just picked two off of the Sunmaster plant. We're getting lots of blooms but most are still drying out and dropping. Some of the plants are also looking a bit stressed and wilted on their lower parts. I'm hoping that when the highs fall into the mid to lower 90s (33 to 34 c) the tomatoes will pick up. The hanging basket cucumber plant is doing well. It now has a second cucumber growing. As for peppers, it seems that we are going to have several red bell peppers and the Habanero and Tabasco have put on lots and lots of blooms this past week.

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Cucumber #2

First Black Prince tomato of the Fall

Lots of blooms but no tomatoes on this Hawaiian Tropic plant

First Cucumber

We harvested our first cucumber from the hanging basket plant today. It's not huge, but looks very cool as far as cucumbers go. In all probability, it would have grown larger but I was afraid that, if I let it go much longer, it would either get bitter or the rest of the plant would quit producing. Truthfully I was a bit impatient as well. So, I picked it early this morning. I'll let you all know how it tastes.

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Veggie Output

Vegetable production is picking up a bit. If the daily highs will just cool off a few more degrees then things should really get going. I'm hoping that there are many more pictures like these to come over the course of the Fall.

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This Sunmaster tomato should be ready soon.

The okra has really picked up its pace.

This is going to be my first cucumber.

Baby Cucumbers

We have cucumbers! After about a month of unsuccessful blooms, this morning I found six tiny cucumbers on our lone remaining plant. It's going to be interesting to see if the confines of the hanging basket influence how large they grow.

Very Cool!

Mysterious Cucumber Ailment

This morning I went out to find one of our hanging basket cucumber plants in terrible shape. At least 75 percent of the plant just dried up and wilted away during the night. Strange stuff....any ideas?

Hanging Cucumber Update

Our hanging cucumber plants continue to grow and bloom, but have yet to produce anything edible. As with the tomato plants, I think it's just too hot for the blooms to set. I've also noticed that that hanging basket's soil dries out much faster than that of our other containers. Currently I'm having to water the cucumbers twice daily.

Cucumber Update

Our hanging cucumber plants seem to be doing quite well. They are growing very quickly, and this morning I noticed that one had produced its first bloom. I've never grown cukes before, so I really don't know how well they set in the heat. Tomorrow it's supposed to cool down into the 90s for a few days. Maybe this cold front will help out a little.

Cucumbers in a Basket

A month or so ago I decided that I wanted to grow some cucumbers. How to do this became a challenge, as I realized that I really didn't have the space for such a large and sprawling plant. So after thinking it over and failing miserably a couple of times at growing a hanging upside-down tomato, I decided that the hanging basket was the way to go. I planted a couple of cucumber seeds in the basket that I had used for the hanging tomatoes, started watering, and presto--two cucumber plants. The vines will, hopefully, trail down below the basket with the cucumbers hanging on them. Due to the size constraints of the basket, I don't think they will get too big, but we'll see.