Diva Cucumbers Planted Nov 8, 2020

[Shawn]

Dec 18, 2020 21:53:18 GMT -5 fldave said:

 I see me tearing into the dozen or so boxes of AG seed kits that came with the gardens just to get the bottles of plant food out of them.

LOL, I do that now with all mine

[Sher]

So do I! And I also refill small bottles from the big bottle because they are easier to manage.

[fldave]

Day 44 Photos.  I extracted the Harvest360 from the clutches of the Diva, added another section of trellis to try to fence her in and had to move the supplemental grow-light farther away to keep from scorching her leaves.  She drank 2.25 gallons of water in the past four days.

Before Harvest extraction (day 42):



After Harvest extraction (day 44):

[Sher]

Wow! She's a true diva!

[fldave]

Day 50 update.  The Diva continues to grow more and longer branches, big bright flowers and more cucumbers.  I counted 37 one to one-and-a-half inch long cucumbers on day 44.  The cucumbers seemed to be increasing in quantity but not much in size and the first two cucumbers that I saw a couple of weeks ago shriveled and died.  Cucumbers are known to need a lot of magnesium and I use reverse osmosis filtered water which has all magnesium removed.  Every time I add even the smallest amount of CaliMagic the leaves yellow on the edges so I began feeding daily micro-doses of pre-dissolved epsom salts.  After a few days the cucumbers began to get a deeper shade of green where they meet the stem and by day 50 I measured several that are over two inches long with much improved coloring.  I am not seeing any increase in the TDS levels 24 hours after feeding, they have been consistently in the 700s forever, so the magnesium that I am adding is all getting absorbed, not being left in the water.  I am slowly increasing the daily epsom salt dosage to find the threshold where the following day’s TDS readings start to increase indicating residual magnesium in the water, then I will back off.

[Sher]

What a wonderful discovery!

[fldave]

It’s been 55 days since planting the Diva seed and we have several 3” long healthy looking cucumbers.  The seed package says harvesting should begin around day 60 and since the ideal harvesting length for these is 4” to 5” we are right on schedule.  They grew about an inch over the past five days.  She is drinking over a gallon of water every two days and I am now feeding 12ml of AG nutrients every day to keep the TDS over 1000 to ensure flavorful cucumbers.  

The bad news is that the roots have invaded the inside of the grow deck.  There are roots coming out of every pod water port but the pump is still running.  There is no way to service the deck, I can’t even tilt it up an inch, as the plant has a strong hold on all of the trellises and nearby light-posts.  The best I could do was to remove the pump filter, pull out the roots in the pump housing with hemostats, and install a clean filter.  The old filter was pretty clogged with roots.

The other problem was that there were a lot of large leaves pushing flat up against the Bounty’s light fixture.  Their associated branches are holding on to other things too tightly to move.  The only thing that I could do was to cut out the offending leaves.  Not only were they blocking light to the rest of the plant but they could possibly cause the LEDs to overheat due to lack of airflow.  

Hopefully I will have some harvested cucumbers in-hand for my next update.

[Sher]

What a beautiful, thriving plant! It looks like you got the magnesium perfect, too.

[fldave]

Thanks Corinne & Sher.  Yes I added a total of about 1.3 tsp of epsom salts over a nine day period.  Once I seemed to have a residual magnesium level in the water I decided to increase the daily AG nutrients dose by 50% to sustain the TDS over 1000.  Since the AG nutes also have magnesium, I am holding off on the epsom salts for now.  

Observing the effects on the electrical conductivity of water by epsom salts vs CALiMAGic in an experiment that I did I concluded that one teaspoon of the finely-ground epsom salts that I am using is roughly equivalent to the magnesium in 3ml of CALiMAGic (noting that the calcium carbonate component of CALiMAGic has no effect on the electrical conductivity of water).  It should be noted that epsom salts is magnesium sulfate which can easily bond with calcium to form gypsum if you are not careful, whereas CALiMAGic has magnesium nitrate. I made no attempt to assess the impacts that the iron component of CaliMagic or the sulfur component of epsom salts have on the electrical conductivity of the water ... I was just looking for a rough estimate of dosage equivalency. 

[fldave]

Woohoo it looks like we will be having several fresh four to five inch Diva Cucumbers in our salads tonight!  It is day 57 since planting the seed.

[Sher]

Congratulations on your experiment and the excellent results!

And thanks so much for passing it on to us.

[fldave]

These are very tender, juicy and tasty.  Definitely more flavorful than store-bought.  It looks like there are more lined up for harvesting tonight and the days to come.  I am very happy with the results of this project.

[gsaxon]

I know this is an old thread, but how long did you let your cucumber project go and how many cucumbers would you say that you picked? I am so impressed by the plant, but I wonder if it is worth the effort.

[campingcorgis]

Jan 17, 2022 19:26:28 GMT -5 gsaxon said:

I know this is an old thread, but how long did you let your cucumber project go and how many cucumbers would you say that you picked? I am so impressed by the plant, but I wonder if it is worth the effort.

I don't think fldave has been around for a while.  You could take a look at maskedsonnet 's garden projects as she has had great luck with cucumbers.  Try her Farm XL thread, I think. 

[maskedsonnet]

It is the Farm XL thread! According to my app the project is on day 158. Doing a quick scroll back through the project, I picked my first cucumber roughly 6 weeks after planting and picked about 40 cucumbers that I snapped photos of, but there's probably been more that I got excited about and ate before talking about. It's been quite productive! I do plan on ending the project in a couple days to start a zucchini experiment, but it will give me a couple more cucumbers before I do, they're just about ready. So about a 5-month project, with about 10 cucumbers per month after the first one came off the plant. The project certainly could keep trucking on but I've finally gotten antsy enough to sacrifice the plant and its baby cukes.

[gsaxon]

Wow. That was a very successful project. Thanks for the insight and motivation!