Growing Cucumbers In The Garden And In The Barrel

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

"The trough is full of people washed up." Part 2

Growing cucumbers in a barrel

Preparing the barrel for sowing. In the spring, in the sunniest place in the garden, a leaky barrel awaits me. Around the middle of April, when the snow is melting all around, I put the cut branches of berry and other bushes and trees in it, then I collect old grass and all organic garbage in it. I burn everything.

I rake out the ashes, and put the hay and leaves stored up since last summer in a warm barrel, then a layer of half-decomposed, still frozen compost, pour out a couple of buckets of manure stored in the fall. I spill everything with hot water, cover it with foil. I wrap the barrel with black foil: let it bask in the sun.

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When the snow melts and you can take the land from the garden, I pour the earth mixed with humus into the barrel to the very top.

Sowing seeds. On May 6, on Yegoriev day, I water the ground with warm water and sow dry seeds in a circle, stepping back from the walls of the barrel by 15 cm. The distance between the seeds is 10-12 cm. I insert a peg into the center of the barrel, put an empty plastic bottle on it, cover the crops lutrasil and film. It turns out a cone on which rainwater does not linger. When the frost stops, I take off the shelter.

This sowing date was once recommended to me by an old gardener, and I have followed her advice for many years. However, if the spring is long and very cold, the seeds do not germinate well, the seedlings grow slowly. In this case, it is better to play it safe and sow some of the seeds at home for seedlings. As soon as it gets warmer, the seedlings can be planted in a barrel, but first it must be hardened.

The choice of the variety. The F1 Othello and Connie F1 hybrids have performed well in the barrel. I always sow my favorite Murom variety. It gives the earliest and tastiest cucumbers with a real Russian cucumber spirit. All other superfood early maturing varieties that I have tested ripen later. If you pluck small rounded fruits in a timely manner, then their skin will be thin and tender, the pulp is fragrant and sweet. The overgrown skin coarsens, but they are very tasty when lightly salted.

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Planting care. I do not do any pinching to the bushes, the bees themselves find flowers, almost no weeding is required. Only abundant watering with warm water, to which herbal infusion, slurry or mineral dressing are certainly added. When the soil in the barrel settles strongly, you need to pour fertile soil into it. There have been no diseases for many years. Thus, the plants in the barrel require minimal maintenance.

Harvesting. In late June - early July, the first cucumbers ripen. The barrel does its job well - to give the earliest cucumbers.

Growing cucumbers in the garden

On a garden bed in the open field, she grew cucumbers out of curiosity, and also when hunters for non-ferrous metals stole a cucumber greenhouse. The neighbors who keep the cow do not have a greenhouse, and they take buckets of cucumbers from the garden, generously filled with manure. They do not use modern varieties; they have sowed local folk varieties from the Pskov region for many years in a row. They are very tasty when salted, but they crunch so much that you can hear it in the neighboring village. On cold nights, they cover the beds with foil.

In a sunny place, I made a bed 1.2 m wide, filled it with compost - 2 buckets per square meter, dug finely chopped greens of dream into the topsoil - about a bucket per square meter, which by the time of planting grew in sufficient quantities in the garden. For two weeks she covered the bed with a film so that the soil warms up better.

Then she installed plastic arcs along the entire length of the bed. I stuck them into the ground, stepping back from the edges of the beds by 30 cm. I covered the arcs with a cloth sewn from nets from under vegetables. It turned out in the middle of the bed a mesh tunnel. Subsequently, cucumber lashes crawled along the outer wall of the net, clinging to it with a mustache. She sowed cucumber seeds along the tunnel on the left strip of land 30 cm - in the 20th of May.

For sowing, I used the new varieties and hybrids of cucumbers for open ground that appeared then on sale: F1 Crane, Salting, Finger, Malysh, F1 Semcross, F1 Octopus, as well as my favorite Murom. Later she tested F1 Connie, F1 Ladoga, F1 Karelian.

The crops were covered with foil before flowering. Care - usual: weeding, watering, loosening, adding soil. On cold August nights, it was necessary to cover the plantings with foil and lutrasil. Plants covered the entire tunnel. On the surface of the net hung cute, clean cucumbers, covered with cucumber leaves. Nothing grew inside the tunnel, it was dark. The harvest was average.

The Muromsky variety stood out for its early ripening, and it bore fruit continuously, F1 Zhuravlenok and F1 Ladozhsky, which turned out to be incredibly tasty when salted. Both hybrids yielded evenly throughout the summer and until the most severe frosts. All other hybrids together gave the main harvest in the first half of summer. In terms of yield, the varieties lagged behind the hybrids.

In defense of the Muromsky cucumber. About 10 years ago, we knew only a few varieties of cucumbers for open ground. Among them, an honorable place was occupied by the old Russian varieties Muromsky, Vyaznikovsky, Nezhinsky, Nerosimny local and others. Now a huge number of new varieties and hybrids appear on the market every year, it is still growing like mushrooms after a rain. Of course, the new varieties have many advantages over the previous ones: they are more productive, their fruits lie for a long time without losing their presentation, the lashes do not need to be pinched, since the harvest is formed not only on the side, but also on the main stem, the harvest is possible receive until autumn, etc. No less important is the early maturity of the variety, so that fresh or freshly salted cucumber can be served with a young potato. The first cucumber in the garden is the most important cucumber.

I've tried almost all varieties. And always our good old Muromsky was ahead of everyone in early maturity, it was he who gave the very first cucumber. If the advertisement of some new our or a foreign variety indicates that it is distinguished by its super early maturity, there is no doubt that among its "ancestors" there is the Muromsky variety. But still, our Muromsky remains invincible for the time being.

And not only that he is good. For my taste and scent, it is the best among all in taste and aroma. Take a bite of such a cucumber, and immediately you will feel the real cucumber spirit, without any modern herbaceous aftertaste. And how sweet it is. Even lightly salted cucumbers have a prickly sweetness inside. I have never met such a charm in any other variety.

Why do many people dislike this variety? And first of all, because its fruits are small, 6-7 cm long. Not everyone likes it. But they are the earliest, they have no time to grow to large sizes. In addition, many do not like the fact that cucumbers are in the shape of a barrel. But they are all even - one to one, because the variety has become stable over a long time of its existence. Not like some modern unfinished early-ripening varieties: it happens that on the same bush cucumbers even have different shapes.

Muromsky also scolds for the fact that, they say, cucumbers quickly turn yellow, their peel is rough. They really turn yellow quickly, so cucumbers cannot be stored for a long time and cannot be overexposed on the bush. After all, this variety is intended so that its cute fruits as quickly as possible, as soon as they take shape, are picked and eaten or salted. The whole point of Murom cucumber is in early maturity, not a single extra day of overexposure. A pickled cucumber in a timely manner will have a very thin and tender peel. If you visit your site once a week, then Muromsky is not your cucumber, In defense of Muromsky, one can add that not only young fresh or lightly salted cucumbers are good. Salted and canned greens are also crunchy, besides, they are not rough, and teeth will not break here.

The variety gives off a bountiful harvest in unison. Therefore, it is not necessary to plant a lot of bushes so that it does not "overwhelm" you with fruits above your head. Two or three bushes for an early salad is enough. And one more useful function of Muromsky can be noted: he is an excellent pollinator. By the time other varieties are just beginning to bloom, Muromsky is already covered with bright yellow fragrant flowers, which are clearly visible to bees among medium-sized foliage.