Tuesday, August 12, 2014

It was time to get rid of the cucumber vine…

I love cucumbers, I love the foliage of the cumber vine…it’s a match made in heaven!

I especially love it when the vines start to take over and wrap themselves around everything…

However the love affair screeches to a halt when mildew spots start to appear…

And leaves start to yellow.

One day last week I became increasingly annoyed at the sight and decided it was time to make it all go away. That’s when I discovered just how many cucumbers were hiding in there. Funny thing I was growing a white pickling cuc and a lemon cuc. I got neither, just short, fat, yellow skinned ones (they were tasty though). So what’s a girl to do when she finds herself with an abundance of cucumbers and no desire to work hard enough to make dill pickles? Well she finds a recipe for refrigerator pickles of course!

This recipe really couldn’t have been easier (here if you missed the link above) and we’re loving the carrots and red onion I tossed in too. If you’ve got too many cucumbers and don’t know what to do give it a whirl!

So what am I doing with that empty stock tank? Using it to corral new plant purchases/gifts...

Some of these will be discussed in future posts, but below’s a marvelous pair that might not be. Can you guess what these plants have in common? They’re both “bird of paradise”...on the left/top is Strelitzia reginae and bottom/right is Caesalpinia gilliesii. One will go in a container and one should be hardy here if I place it right.

This one is a seedling of Melianthus villosus, gifted to me by one Practical Plant Geek.

Oh and I’m thinking about starting a fall crop in this tank and would love to hear any ideas you’ve got…

All material © 2009-2014 by Loree Bohl for danger garden. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude.

26 comments:

  1. Mmm... pickles! They look delicious Loree.

    -Bridget

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    1. I thought of you when I was researching recipes, figuring you'd never endorse such a short cut and be up for making the real thing.

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  2. As always you found a great solution! Maybe kale for your stock tank for fall? Not the flowering kind but the big dark edible dinosaur kale that makes great kale chips.

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  3. Yum pickles!

    Some gardeners swear by a milk solution for powdery mildew- apparently it works very well on Monarda. I swear by the same solution as you- pull the suckers out.

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    1. I read that earlier in the season and thought to myself, I should try that when/if. Ya, you can see how well that worked out!

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  4. I made 6 jars of a similar refrigerator pickle last week and I have already eaten 3 of the jars. I did add several hot chilies to each jar make them spicy though. So yummy!

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    1. Hot chilies!!! That's a great idea, next time.

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  5. Just thinking about doing this very thing as lemon cukes are filling up the fridge. The other thing about refrigerator pickles is that by lining up the quart jars across the back of each shelf, the usable remaining space is actually usable without turning into a treasure hunt.
    I'm planting beets & cress (goody bag seeds) and arugula about now.

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    1. I briefly considered buying quart jars for the effort, but decided that wasn't smart when I was trying to make something on the cheap. Oh arugula, how I love arugula.

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  6. Those pickles look *great* -- I've had good luck too with diluted milk spray on cuke & squash leaves for mildew. Important to get it early I've found, or it's not as effective. Also kale & arugula & cilantro (if you like that kind of thing) would be great autumn crops in there and you can just broadcast seed to keep it easy peasy.

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    1. Good to know the milk spray works and yes! I love all three of those things, thanks for the suggestion.

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  7. We made fridge pickles one year -- yummy! I was also going to suggest kale. If you don't like the look of "dinosaur" kale, grow the red russian (or is it "russian red") type. Pretty and delicious!

    I do spray the milk solution sometimes (usually only when the milk is too old) and I think it works (on some plants at least), but I'm not fond of the milk smell that lingers for a day or two.

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    1. I have a strong aversion to milk smell (thats why I only drink skim), especially when it's starting to turn. Just reading those words kind of made my stomach turn.

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  8. I wouldn't mind some of those pickles of yours Loree. With a dash of salt...yummy!! :)

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    1. I don't think they'd survive the trip, otherwise I'd send some over!

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  9. I see that pruned Yucca (the one with the spikes sticking straight up) and have never seen one pruned that way before. Mine has NOT been loving the hot summer weather in NorCal (I moved last year and this is the first summer on my new apartment patio). I can imagine it grows back into a "fluff"? Very cool.

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    1. Good eye, ya that poor yucca was not happy where it was planted. It was at the base of a group of tetrapanax and had just been looking worse and worse, I finally dug it out a few weeks ago and cut back the yellow spikes, I need to find a good place to replant it. I hope it will grow back into the fluff of spikes, fingers crossed.

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  10. I'd never heard of refrigerator pickles - I'll have to remember that if I grow lemon cukes next year. My favorite fall/winter veg garden choice is sugar snap peas - they're easy to grow from seed, attractive, and you can munch them right from the vine.

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    1. You can do the pickles with other types of cucumbers too. And yes! Peas are the best. I used to always have a spring crop in the tanks until I started using them to overwinter fall purchases that didn't get planted out in time. Perhaps I'l try a fall crop, thanks!

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  11. I yanked one of my cucumber plants today, too. I couldn't stand the sight of it anymore. The rest still have flowers, so I'll let them be for another day or two - or until I get a wild yankin' hair. My eggplant are in the same sad state. I think I have 15 jars of refrigerator pickles so far - regular and lemon cucs. The recipe I used said to wait at least a month until popping them open for a taste test. I'm not sure I can wait that long. I've never done fall crops, but I have seeds for beets, radishes, spinach, kale, kohlrabi, and chard. I may have to clean out the cucs just to make room for a trial run of newbies.

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    1. Funny my recipe said 3 days to wait, I don't think I could manage to wait an entire month!

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  12. Great post. Love that Caesalpinia gilliesii,the dissected texture of it is marvelous let alone how lovely and airy the flowers are. Great shrub. those pickles look great! At first I thought your cucumbers were way past their prime until I read that they were supposed to be yellow. I've not seen them before. Nice!

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    1. I'm familiar with the yellow lemon cucumbers, which look like yellow tennis balls but this is the first I've seen ones like I've got. It's a strange thing but I'm enjoying them.

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  13. Refrigerator pickles--great idea! I have a few Cucumbers growing in my garden, but not that many! Just enough to eat a few per week. Yum! Great place to store your new plants.

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  14. Fudge Brownie pickles. Interesting...

    Actually this looks like a great idea! (Refrigerator pickles, not fudge brownie ones.) Our cukes are just starting to show little baby cucumbers. I sowed the seed rather late.

    Territorial has a kale called Nero Di Tuscana that I think is the same as "dinosaur" kale. You could also try their Purple Peacock broccoli. I haven't grown it, but it looks cool!

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