Planning a Vegetable Garden

Posts Tagged ‘Vegetable Seeds’

It’s easy to learn how to grow cucumbers, if you remember they like sunshine and moist soil.  Here are some tips on growing cucumbers with abundance.

Starting Cucumber Seeds

Depending on your climate, you can either start cucumber seeds inside, or you can plant them directly outside. 

If you want to plant them directly outside, make sure the soil is warm — at least 75 degrees — and that the ground is damp, but not wet.  You can plant in large containers, in rows, or on “hills”.

If you start cucumber seeds inside, I’ve had good luck using the jiffy peat disks.  That way, once they have sprouted and developed their first true leaf, I can plant them, jiffy disk and all, into the garden.

Either way, cucumber seeds generally sprout in around 3 to 7 days.

Spacing in the Garden

When it comes to spacing cucumber plants in the garden, I like to plant in hills, 2 plants to a hill.

“Hill” is kind of a strange term.  It can mean an actual mound of soil…or just the spacing of the plants.  I personally don’t mound my soil.  I just put 2 plants about 12 inches apart, and keep the “hills” 4 feet apart.

If you want to space cucumbers in a traditional row, try putting the plants 2 feet apart, with 4 feet between rows.

Cucumbers in Containers

You can indeed grow cucumbers in containers!  I grow them in 5-gallon containers myself.  Just remember to keep the plants watered and fed more often than if the plants were in the ground.  Containers dry out faster, and the more frequent watering leaches the fertilizer from the soil.

The photo shows on of my “baby” cucumbers from one of the container plants.

Sunlight and Soil

As I mentioned, cucumbers like warm feet — warm soil, that is.  They also like plenty of sunshine.  But also give these plants room to roam — the vines can grow mighty long.

I like to grow the cucumbers in soil that’s been heavily amended with compost.

Growing Cucumbers Vertically

After an interesting experiement I had with growing cukes and zucchini upside down, I’ve decided it’s not for anyone who regularly gets winds more than 10 miles an hour.  Well, not unless you have a sheltered spot that has a windbreak.

Unfortunately, my cucumbers and zucchini got pretty beat up from the wind, so I had to pull them down and plant them in the ground (where they are much happier).

However, if you do have a spot in the garden that doesn’t get a lot of wind, it’s very much worth growing your cucumber vines on a trellis or upside-down.  Your cucumber fruits will grow straighter as a result.

How to Grow Cucumbers – Variety

The cucumber variety ““ is easy to find and is a great open-pollinated seed variety.  Another popular open pollinated variety is called ““.   And if you’d like to try something a little on the unusual side, try ““.

However, I am trialing the variety “Sweet Success” and so far, I am very impressed.  And will probably drown in cucumbers before very long!  I planted 4 seeds, and in reality, I could easily have gotten by with planting just 1 — the plant is that prolific!

Sweet Success has only female blossoms, so every flower bears a cucumber.  And my plants have a flower at every leaf node.  The first of the cukes will be eating-size within a week, so if they taste half as good as they look, these plants will have a permanent spot in my garden. 

Here’s the link: Sweet Success hybrid slicing cucumber.

Enjoy growing, harvesting and (especially) eating your cucumbers!

Update

I’ve picked 3 huge (around 14 inch) Sweet Success cucumbers so far, with a 4th ready for plucking. The taste is mild but good — no bitterness at all. Nice and firm throughout; no watery texture anywhere. Tiny undeveloped seeds, so it would be great for anyone who doesn’t tolerate the seeds well.

So I give this cucumber 2 thumbs up and will keep it ongoing in my garden.

What kind of vegetable seeds should you plant for a small garden?  If you’re tight on space, you’ll want to carefully consider what seeds you plant.  Some vegetables grow into large plants that can take over a small space!

Vegetable Seeds and Variety

This topic actually has a double meaning.  Most people want a bit of variety to the vegetables they grow.  And it also refers to the variety of a particular vegetable.  For example, some tomato plants can go wild and grow 6 or more feet tall.  Other varieties are shorter and more compact (thus conserving growing space).  There are quite a few vegetable varieties that can be used successfully in a small space vegetable garden.

Here are some ideas that I have used for a small vegetable garden, in two sizes — 4′ x 4′ and 4′ x 6′.  Naturally, you won’t be able to grow a ton of different vegetables in these small space vegetable gardens, but you can certainly grow plenty.  You just need to know the varieties of vegetables that will work well for you.

If you indeed can only use a 4′ x 4′ space, please consider a raised bed vegetable garden.  Your veggies will grow better because of the deeper loamy soil.  Better growing translates to a larger harvest.

Vegetable Seeds for a 4′ x 4′ Garden

If you have just a 4′ x 4′ space, you won’t have a lot of room to spare.  One small garden type I recommend is a salad garden, which is wonderful for those hot Summer nights.

My favorite salad garden consists of the following:

• Tomatoes
• Lettuce and/or spinach
• Radishes

Where you need to be careful is with the varieties of tomatoes and cucumbers you grow; they are the two plants that grow largest.  That being said, here are the varieties of vegetable seeds I recommend for a 4′ x 4′ raised bed garden.

Tomatoes: Celebrity, Sweet Baby Girl, Better Bush Improved Hybrid.  All three are great choices, but my top pick of these three is Celebrity.  Since you can grow 2 tomato plants in a 4′ x4′ garden, why not add a second variety for, well, variety!

Lettuce: I recommend leaf lettuces over head lettuces, because you can pluck leaves as needed instead of waiting for a whole plant to get big enough. As long as you don’t pluck too many leaves at one time from a given plant, it will just grow more leaves to use later. Some of the lettuces I like are Red Sails, Simpson Elite. If you’re feeling adventurous, try Salad Bowl Mix.

Spinach: I love baby spinach leaves for a salad, and they are quite nutritous. Pick what you need from several plants, then let them keep developing new leaves for you! My favorite small-space spinach is Renegade.

Radishes: It’s so very amazing how fast these vegetables can grow! Plant them a week or two after the lettuce and/or spinach. As you harvest them, you can plant more seeds, for a continuing harvest. I love color in my salads, so my choice is Easter Egg Blend II.

In general, plant 2 tomatoes (diagonally from each other) and keep other plants 18″ away from them.  The fill in with radishes, lettuce and/or spinach, planted just a smidgen closer than specified on the seed pack.  After all, in a raised bed garden, you have the wonderful soil that enables you to place the vegetables a little closer than normal.

Vegetable Seeds for a 4′ x 6” Garden

In addition to the veggies specified above, I like to add cucumbers or summer squash to a 4′ x 6′ raised bed small space vegetable garden.  Pick only one of the two, because you want at least 2 plants so that you have enough flowers for the veggies to produce well.

You can choose to grow your cucumbers or squash sprawling or up a cage.  There are different kinds of each.

Cucumbers: For sprawling over the side, I like Salad Bush Hybrid. (You can also train this up a cage if you like). But if I am going the cage route, I prefer Sweet Success.

Summer Squash: These I just grow up a cage! My top picks are Park’s Straightneck for yellow squash and Spineless Beauty for zucchini.

Note: You can let any of these sprawl if you like; make a hill on one of the 4′ ends of the raised bed and you can have three plants, spilling over the sides.

Final Notes on Vegetable Seeds

If you don’t like something on these lists, you can choose other veggies.  In particular, pole beans make great additions to your small space garden because you can train them up a trellis or tower!

If you’re longing for some sweet peppers instead, try the sweet pepper Carmen. Not a bell, but it’s space saving and delicious served all kinds of ways.

Vegetable seeds for small gardens aren’t hard to grow, but the smaller your garden, the more carefully you need to choose your varieties.

Enjoy your harvest!