By gisette
Outdoor Cukes, Zukes, and Melons 2010
Submitted on Sun, 2010/05/16 - 9:54pm
Last updated on Tue, 2010/11/23 - 12:58pm
At the ripe old age of 2 weeks, these all needed transplanting out. 
I love cucurbits that way...
20100702: planted backup tendergreen and pearl cukes.
20100721: planted gold bar melon, very late... plant died of 95+ degree heat after setting first fruit, aged 6 weeks.
Harvests:
1 zucchini: 6 (first at 6 weeks!) - retired plant at 10.5 weeks
1 pearl cuke: 14 (first at 52 days! 7.5 weeks)
1 cucino cuke: 9 (first at 52 days! 7.5 weeks) - retired plant at 11 weeks
1 tendergreen cuke: 9 (first at 56 days! 8 weeks) - retired plant at 11 weeks
3 Japanese cuke plants: 83 (first at 58 days! 8 weeks) - retired plants at 17.5 weeks
1 sweet n' early cantaloupe: 3 (first still green at 86 days - 12+ weeks - advertised as 73 days)
late pearl cuke: 14 (first at 36 days!?) - retired plant at 9.5 weeks (powdery mildew death)
late tendergreen cuke: 16 (first at 39 days!?) - retired plant at 9.5 weeks (powdery mildew death)
Sun, 2010/05/30 - 6:59pm
#2
Cucurbits deliriously happy with the hot bright weather we've been having - 70's and 80's.
Tue, 2010/06/08 - 12:32am
#3
Continued delirium with the hot weather. We people neighbors are less enthused - thankfully, the heat broke yesterday - only 70's this week, until climbing back to the 80's this weekend. Too hot for early June.
The zucchini - aged 5 weeks! - has a female flower open first. Hopefully a male flower will appear soon.
There's a third Japanese cucumber plant, currently pretty hidden by mass of daylily leaves.
Sun, 2010/06/13 - 5:23pm
#4
Ate my first zucchini yesterday - at age 6 weeks! Seedless, because the female flowers opened first. So I ate it kinda small... Very nice! Looks like another seedless wonder will be ready in a day or two. With luck, some of the first cucino cuke flowers will ripen, too. A cuke in mid June would be awesome!
This week's weather has been seasonable, but the heat wave from May to last week has really fast-forwarded all crops in CT. Apparently the strawberry crop is 3 weeks ahead of normal. This, despite hard freezes after Mother's Day! (May 9 this year)
Wed, 2010/06/16 - 9:17am
#5
Hi Gisette,
Very nice! What variety of zucch is that? It looks like it doesn't require pollination to set fruit-
Beth
Wed, 2010/06/16 - 11:50am
#6
Hi, Beth! Good to hear from you!
Zucchini Burpee hybrid. Not much of a name, but they've been selling it for 40 years. It finally has some male flowers open, but 2 more fruit already set before they opened. Very cool! This variety is "compact". For a zucchini. 
All the cukes and cantaloupe now have flowers open too - most male and female, some maybe another day or two for the female. Are you having a fast-forward season down in Maryland, too?
Sun, 2010/06/20 - 10:01pm
#7
Harvested another seedless wonder zuke. 
Now it's in the normal groove, tho - male and female flowers working together. The first cukes are fattening, and I think all the curcurbits have pollinated first fruits. Maybe cukes to eat in a week! (The upstairs cuke varieties are small and the weather is toasty.)
Haven't seen a single cucumber beetle or squash bug yet - yay!
Mon, 2010/06/28 - 12:55pm
#8
Cucumber harvest began this week - early! YUM! Ate / shared 14 small cukes in less than a week so far. I may get tired of cucumbers soon. But not yet. I've harvested from all the small-fruit varieties, and should pick my first Japanese cuke in the next day or so.
The zucchini has been underachieving - for a zucchini. (It does have 2 more zukes on board ready to harvest in a couple days.) I think adding growbox fertilizer to the zuke and melon was a mistake. Anyway, I scraped it back out again. Lots of baby melon flowers, but so far they've all yellowed and fallen off instead of developing melonward. The Japanese cukes have been having a lot of that problem, too. Maybe it's just hot out. The plants look healthy.
Sun, 2010/07/04 - 2:18pm
#9
A slower harvesting week with only (!) 8 cukes and 3 zukes. But includes the first pollinated zuke and the first Japanese cuke. I was trying to get away without hand-pollinating, since there seem to be plenty of insects buzzing. But they seem to need it. The Japanese cukes are definitely underperforming. But they have to deal with the A/C compressor, too.
Still no beetles! No squash bugs! But - it's getting toward that time of year. Lost a number of zukes to squishiness. I think they weren't pollinated, tho I thought they were. Like, unpollinated fruits need to be picked pretty small.
Lots of little melons have failed to make it so far. I'm hoping getting the plant up off the driveway will help - summer blacktop is too hot for any plant.
Planted backup tendergreen and pearl cukes. Because I love them so... The small cuke plants are getting a little yellow - lost a few leaves, most have yellow edges, cucino fruits kinda malformed.
Sun, 2010/07/04 - 4:40pm
#10
Correction: at least two three little melons are growing. 
About an inch now, and still furry, with little cantaloupe ribs showing through the fur. Wish me luck...
I pruned off some suckers yesterday. The way curcurbits grow, I don't think extra vines help, and probably hurt. But the cantaloupe is a very branchy plant.
Sun, 2010/07/11 - 5:11pm
#11
Small cuke harvests dwindling, big Japanese cukes picking up - another 13 cukes eaten this week. The zucchini continues reproductively weird, but producing.
The cantaloupe is my star plant of the week! 
Expect to eat one or three this week! If it takes near 100°F weather to make this plant happy, no wonder I've never been successful with melons. 
This week's heat wave broke 100-year records.
Aren't the melons cute?
Not sure I'm going to get any more cucino cukes, maybe just a few more tendergreen. The pearl cuke looks just as yellow-leaved, but it's setting more cukes in a vine threaded into the tomato plant. Maybe another week or so with these plants before swapping in the backup cukes. The in-ground Japanese cuke plants look gorgeously healthy.
Sun, 2010/07/18 - 3:36pm
#12
Retired 2 small cuke plants, plus the zucchini. Will probably retire the 3rd small cuke (pearl), too, but I'm giving it a couple more days to see if it revives. But the Japanese cukes are gorgeously healthy and producing well now. (One Japanese cuke is about as much vegetable as 3-5 of the small ones.) And the backup cucumbers are growing well. No idea how long it'll take for the cantaloupe to finish ripening, but they're still getting the heat they like.
Sun, 2010/07/25 - 10:37pm
#13
Retired the pearl cuke plant - its one remaining fruit never grew. But with another 12 - much bigger - Japanese cukes harvested this week, really not feeling deprived. Pretty cuke-saturated.
I knew it was bad luck to mention the cucumber beetles. They arrived as soon as I mentioned they hadn't shown yet. No especial damage yet.
The cantaloupes look so close to ripe... I don't think the plant is going to grow any further fruit, tho. Keeps setting little melons, which then yellow and fall off. It's possible it might produce more after the big three are picked...
This week I started gold bar melons - wish me luck. It's late in the season, but... they grow fast when it's hot, and they're rated at 68 days... It's really a cuke-melon hybrid. And it was only 80 cents.
Tue, 2010/08/03 - 9:58pm
#14
Cucumber overdose continues unabated. Ate first cantaloupe - green but good! Baby backup cucumber plants already flowering - including male flowers, at only 4 weeks!
Removed all the growbox fertilizer when the baby cukes went into the growbox. Dosed them with some plain old Miracle Gro - general formula. Hoping they'll stay greener and last better that way. Though at this point in the season, it hardly matters.
Sun, 2010/08/08 - 4:28pm
#15
Really ripe cantaloupes. Very good! A shame there were only three. I'll leave the vine for a week, but not really expecting any more. Still deluged with Japanese cucumbers (16 20 this week - and they're big cukes!) and the replacement small cukes are already starting to bear.
Very happy curcurbit year! Even the cucumber beetles don't seem to be doing much harm (knock on wood).
Sun, 2010/08/15 - 2:16pm
#16
The backup pearl and tendergreen cucumbers are now in production - first fruits at 36 and 39 days! 
Bringing the cucumber haul this week to 16 - 102 this summer. Definitely OD'ing on cucumbers... But I missed a couple big ones on the big Japanese cukes, so those vines may be shutting down now.
The cantaloupe plant doesn't look like it's doing anything more, but it's not dead yet. I'll give it a while longer...
Found another source for Japanese cucumber seeds online. May buy fresh - smaller! - cuke seeds for next year. These weren't quite the right kind, but my mother bought them in Japan for me.
Sun, 2010/08/22 - 5:34pm
#17
All cukes seem to be in sudden decline. < shrug > I've eaten an awful lot of cucumbers this summer. The new little cukes have wasps, cucumber beetles, squash bugs, powdery mildew... But harvested another 11. I'm not sure what ails the two giant Japanese cuke plants, though last week a couple cukes got too big. It's probably more than that. Some leaves get all peppered with tiny holes, then collapse, others turn yellow, some whole subvines collapsed. Some powdery mildew and cucumber beetles. And the Jcuke by the beans has whatever ails the pole beans. Maybe mites. Sprayed it with some neem oil fungicide yesterday... It's been my experience that stuff does more harm than good to cucumber leaves. But, harvested another 10 Japanese cucumbers.
My little late gold bar melon has female flower buds now. That might actually succeed.
Tossed the cantaloupe plant. Powdery mildew and steady decline.
Wed, 2010/09/01 - 5:34pm
#18
Well... now the gold bar melon is failing, too. 
I was looking forward to that one. Oh, well.
No tears over the Japanese cucumbers - I'll probably still get another 1 or 2 off them, 17 weeks old, and they've been harvesting for 10 straight weeks, 80 good-sized cukes - fine performance. Definitely in-ground is a better way to grow cukes. Or, in any not self-watering planter, preferably with more and deeper root space.
Water isn't the only problem with the young tendergreen and pearl cukes - powdery mildew, cucumber beetles, wasps, that milky-sap bacterial disease... For the melon, add caterpillars, and the spotted variety of cucumber beetles. But mostly, it failed the same way last year's cantaloupes did. Grew fine, the weather warmed, they set a couple fruit, and - collapse. It's supposed to cool down again Friday (possibly with hurricane-force winds...) Maybe the melon will rebound. But, I doubt it.
Thu, 2010/09/02 - 1:41pm
#19
The joys of growing outside, everything wants to attack or eat your plants!
Thu, 2010/09/02 - 2:34pm
#20
Well, yeah. But the lights and heat are free.
I really can't complain about this growing season on the curcubit front - and it is September. And we get a glancing blow (hopefully glancing...) from a hurricane tomorrow. So... Time's up. That's OK.
Sun, 2010/09/05 - 7:30pm
#21
No more Japanese cukes, no more gold bar melon. Still have a trickle of little tendergreen and pearl cukes, though the plants are dying of powdery mildew.
Sun, 2010/09/12 - 7:51pm
#22
No more cukes. After 144 cucumbers this summer, I'd have expected to think, Good riddance, we ate enough. But actually, I only feel that way about the tomatoes, which aren't done yet... We really miss the nightly sliced cukes with seasoned rice wine vinegar after our 12 week run of cukes. My daughter and guinea pigs seem to miss them as much as I do.
The guinea pigs are the only ones still enthused about tomatoes.
I'll wait another week or so, just to make sure the powdery mildew doesn't follow indoors. But then I'd like to try at least my "cool weather" Korean cuke...
I should just give up on indoor cukes, shouldn't I. It's the rational decision.
But I love cucumbers.
3 week curcubits - seem happy enough. Will be even happier the next couple days - temps in the 80's. They like that.