Another Mini Munch Cucumber (4/19/22)

[lynnee]

The Mini Munch is continuing to produce delicious, munchable cucumbers. The growing tip is obediently circling the trellis now, without much help from me. Go figure!

This morning I was doing an R&R, and found this little branch, which I removed at the point where it joined the main vine. The arrow is pointing to the growing tip. I'm pretty happy with the way the cucumber is growing, now that I'm limiting it to a single vine.

[scarfguy]

Really cool. Very interested in your training the vine to follow the trellis.

By circling the vine around the trellis, are the newest round of leaves shading the lower leaves too much?

[lynnee]

Day 75 scarfguy, the leaves seem happier in stacked rows than they ever were when I draped the vine vertically in a Farm. It's normal for the oldest leaves to dry up, even when they're getting light. Some more of the lower leaves are about ready to be removed, like the one the arrow is pointing to.



I swiped the idea for training the vine around the trellis from one of the "Aerogarden Experiments" videos on YouTube. He didn't talk about how to do it, but you could see the vine circling around!

[areyoukittenme]

That looks like a very happy cucumber plant!

[lynnee]

The Mini Munch is continuing to grow along the trellis. It has four ready-to-eat cukes this morning.

[Shawn]

Love it

[maskedsonnet]

That's so exciting!! Enjoy the cukes!!

[scarfguy]

FYI: Today I terminated my Iznik cucumber adventure. 

I highly recommend the Iznik variety if you have the room.  It quickly outgrew my aerogarden but I had a nice net to climb on and overhead lighting for it to grow into. The method of tying the cukes to the bounty trellis should work well for this variety also.  The fact that it is parthenocarpic and doesn't need pollination is a big plus!  I didn't count but my guess is that it produced about 50 cucumbers. Even late in the cycle when it was looking almost dead it still produced good tasting fruit.  If I had a complaint, it would be that it produced too many cucumbers all at the same time. There was a couple of weeks there that I had to make a few jars of refrigerator pickles just to use them up.

My iznik seeds came from totally tomato (totallytomato.com)

[Sher]

Jul 21, 2022 11:15:38 GMT -5 scarfguy said:

FYI: Today I terminated my Iznik cucumber adventure. 

I highly recommend the Iznik variety if you have the room.  It quickly outgrew my aerogarden but I had a nice net to climb on and overhead lighting for it to grow into. The method of tying the cukes to the bounty trellis should work well for this variety also.  The fact that it is parthenocarpic and doesn't need pollination is a big plus!  I didn't count but my guess is that it produced about 50 cucumbers. Even late in the cycle when it was looking almost dead it still produced good tasting fruit.  If I had a complaint, it would be that it produced too many cucumbers all at the same time. There was a couple of weeks there that I had to make a few jars of refrigerator pickles just to use them up.

My iznik seeds came from totally tomato (totallytomato.com)

What a wonderful only complaint!

Thanks for the update and recommendation.

[lynnee]

FWIW, my Mini Munch is now trained to grow around and around the trellis. I don't need to add clips to hold it at all!

It's always sad to read about a termination, but the Iznik had a good life, scarfguy!

[Sher]

You are a good lion (oops-cucumber) tamer, lynnee!

[lynnee]

At some point, I seem to have pruned off the growing tip of the Mini Munch--the one that was trained to go around and around the trellis without extra help.. Guess I thought that the tip was a branch.

All is NOT lost, though. The cuke is producing an average one cuke per day, and has developed two promising branches. I'll keep them a while, and then remove the weaker one.

I cleaned up the shriveling fruits and blooms today, and gave it a bonus 4ml of AG nutes.

[Shawn]

It is great you are getting a cuke a day.  Keep up the good work.

[areyoukittenme]

Oct 4, 2022 17:19:14 GMT -5 lynnee said:

At some point, I seem to have pruned off the growing tip of the Mini Munch--the one that was trained to go around and around the trellis without extra help.. Guess I thought that the tip was a branch.

All is NOT lost, though. The cuke is producing an average one cuke per day, and has developed two promising branches. I'll keep them a while, and then remove the weaker one.

I cleaned up the shriveling fruits and blooms today, and gave it a bonus 4ml of AG nutes.

Ooh good luck to the two branches! May the best branch win

[mike]

Is that a good variety for producing both male and female flowers? I tried twice in the last year and first got a variety that produce only female flowers. (Baby Hybrid) then the next one only produced males. I gave up.

[lynnee]

Oct 7, 2022 19:04:42 GMT -5 mike said:

Is that a good variety for producing both male and female flowers? I tried twice in the last year and first got a variety that produce only female flowers. (Baby Hybrid) then the next one only produced males. I gave up.

The Mini Munch is parthenogenic, which means that all the flowers are female. It requires absolutely no pollination, mike. The hard part is managing the vine, because it wants to grow straight up. The MM doesn't branch a lot, but it's best to remove the branches if you want good production. It's very easy to grow, if you understand how to handle it.

[mike]

OK, I'll give those a try. I just ordered some seeds. I have some velcro tie wraps that help train the vines.

[lynnee]

Here's a photo that shows just how ratty the leaves can look on a producing cucumber. (Sorry about the poor focus.) I couldn't stand this any longer, and took the worst ones off after taking the photo. Now the plant is sulking, and delaying its usual cuke production, just like it always does when I remove leaves for cosmetic reasons!

[lynnee]

The Mini Munch has forgiven me for the leaf cleanup, but is busy making other leaves look ratty again.