Last year, our cucumber harvests were amazing. We jarred many quarts of pickles and relish, and ate cucumbers until we were tired of them.
This is a big step up from previous years, where we often struggled to grow many cucumbers the “normal” way, on trellises and mounds.
Inspired by Joseph Lofthouse’s approach to landrace gardening, a few years ago we mixed up a bunch of pickling cucumber seeds and planted them all together, in the ground, without trellises.
The ones that survived and made fruit, we saved seeds from. We’re now on our third (or maybe fourth) generation of mixed-up cukes, and they are really flying.
Last year was the first year they really shone, and we harvested 163lbs.
That was just one of many loads of cucumbers that travelled through our weigh station.
This is the weigh station, by the way:
It’s been quite helpful and gives us goals to hit and exceed from year to year.
But back to the cucumbers. Here are the first fruits we brought in this year:
There should be a flood of them coming in for the next month or so. Once they start producing, you have to check them every day or they blow up into giant blimps!
Landrace Gardening works.
David The Good
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