Lazy Cucumbers

What is missing from this picture?

I’ll save you some time by providing the answer.

Cucumbers.

And large tomatoes, but this post isn’t about tomatoes.

It isn’t about how well the green bean and pepper plants are producing.

Or how I let a squash get away from me and get that big before I saw it and picked it.

Sadly, this post is about how my cucumbers are lazy. They are simply not trying hard enough to produce cucumbers for me to eat.

Four varieties! All colluding, it would seem, to deny me cucumbers.

It is quite embarrassing to listen to people who don’t really garden talk about the cucumbers they are already picking… shoving their phones in my face to show me pictures of their cucumber abundance.

“Did I pick this at the right time?” “Should I have gotten this many cucumbers from one plant?”

Etc.

Simply put, I can only say that my lazy cucumber plants need to try harder. I will not call out the variety names quite yet, but I will mention one cucumber plant that has “punched above its weight” and that is ‘Quick Snack.’

It’s one of the Kitchen Minis. I got the seeds, pot, soil, and trellis from them to grow these cucumbers because as we gardeners say, “Growing is believing.”

That little cucumber plant has produced at least four little cucumbers so far and there are probably four more coming on almost ready to pick.

(Dear reader, that plant next to it is also a Kitchen Mini, Basil ‘Bonsai.’ I want to claim responsibility for that nicely rounded shape but I cannot. The plant is growing that way on its own. The folks at Kitchen Minis also sent me the seeds and pot for it.)

I should take the ‘Quick Snack’ cucumber plant out to The Vegetable Garden Cathedral to show the other cucumber plants what I expect from them. Cucumbers!

Or maybe I’m just not being patient enough? After all, I started all the cucumbers from direct sown seeds and maybe ‘Quick Snack’ is just doing better because I water it more often?

Or my cucumbers are lazy!

To be transparent, right as I was formulating this post in my mind, while weeding around the cucumber vines, I noticed one cucumber ready to pick that I hadn’t seen before. So now I’m wondering if the cucumbers aren’t as lazy as I thought and the lack of cucumbers, so far, is due to the garden fairies playing tricks on me?

Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and maybe laughed at the idea of lazy cucumbers and interfering garden fairies. Or maybe its given you a moment of smugness because you are picking so many cucumbers, you don’t know what to do with all of them. Or perhaps you have no space for a garden, but now you realize you can grow cucumbers successfully in a six-inch pot!

You’re welcome.

With a shared love of gardening, thank you for reading to the end.

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