Wrangling Cucumbers

As noted previously, our cucumber plants had a difficult start to the 2012 growing season. The rabbits in the area were quite impatient, and decided to lop all of the plants off before they even got started producing the goods. We quickly acted, and ended up planting beans where our original cucumbers had been. We felt that we needed to grow some cucumbers at some point, and decided to fill the space where our potatoes once were with a few cucumber plants. We sowed the 'cuke' seeds approximately 3 and a half weeks ago, and are testing out how much heat they can handle. So far so good, but...

This has also left us with some difficulty fitting the cucumbers in among our lower bed. We have some Winter Squash planted in the same bed, and it is a possibility that the viney-ness of the cucumbers might 'strangle' some of their fellow cucurbits. In order to prevent this from happening we had to strap on some gloves and wrestle with the vines for a little while yesterday morning. In the picture below you can see that we used a couple different varieties of cages in order to separate the cucumber plants from the rest of the garden, and from each other.

For the plant on the left we used some leftover fencing from our bean garden, and the plant on the right is simply held up by a tomato cage. We are attempting to train the plants to grow somewhat vertically by tying them to the cages very loosely, in order to not do damage to the stems. In the photo above you can also see that the cages have been tied together, hoping to stabilize them in case of strong winds or storms. Hopefully soon enough we will have some positive results to relay regarding some successful cucumbers!