Sad Cucumbers, happy beans

Ferg
Ferg Posts: 285 ✭✭✭
edited October 2020 in Composting & Soil Fertility

Well, sadly my cascading cucumbers keep getting attacked by something. I suspect, based on my extensive experience killing things with pathogens, that it is part of the Great Compost Disaster of 2020. Oh well. It's really quite disappointing, since the same varieties that I gave to a local community group are producing wildly and I just have sad, dying plants.


However, to make up for that, my herbs are doing really well, as are the bush beans. I'm not a fan of string beans, so I usually plant a mix of purple, yellow wax, and blue lake bush beans. Lovely with some garlic from the garden (already used up one of my two garlic cloves, but yummm), fresh thyme, and almonds all sauteed up in butter.


I love fresh beans. I love them pickled, in a german-style sweet-and-sour potato salad, fried up with potatoes and nuts and quinoa, steamed and drizzled with garlic oil or hollandaise or bernaise sauce. They are wonderful in my Vegan-friendly winter soup along with some other dried beans, garlic, tomatoes, onions, black olives, and lots of black pepper.

I also love them in something called Bohnen, Birnen, & Speck - this is basically bacon, beans, and hard pears.

All my basils are doing really well interplanted with the beans, so picking smells really good. I just picked a basket full of beans which I will toss in a pan with olive oil and minced basil. Yum.

Comments

  • KimWilson
    KimWilson Posts: 197 ✭✭✭

    My cucumbers seem to be doing nothing this year, but my green beans are very happy. Just picked the first batch today.

  • Karen luihn
    Karen luihn Posts: 53 ✭✭✭

    My cucumbers are also sad looking. The leaves are yellow and the cucumbers are sharply tapered at one end. They are in felt grow bags. We’ve had a lot of rain here but I thought that was good for them I’d love some advice

  • Grounded
    Grounded Posts: 153 ✭✭✭

    I have one cucumber plant doing surprisingly well, the remainder of cucumber plants look like they have hardly grown at all. Additionally, the stems near the ground have turned whitish and not healthy at all. I have tried supplementing them with compost and fertilizer to no avail.

    I too have happy beans, zucchini, lettuces, Napa cabbage, radishes and onions. Everything else is just so-so. Each year is a little different. Even though it is a rented community plot, I am actively trying to amend the soil naturally. Always hope for better, but grateful for whatever I get.

  • Ferg
    Ferg Posts: 285 ✭✭✭

    I suspect, from the Signs and Symptoms of my plants, that it is a combination of the compost I used and moisture. The compost seems to have been less mature than optimal, which often leads to an increase in pathogen activity. I was hoping once it got hot, they'd die off, but these seem to be pretty heat tolerant. The new plants come up beautifully but then the lesions start. All these pots will be marvelous next year, but sadly it's crimping my pickle plans for this year.

    Oddly, though, the neighbor, who plants more conventional cucumbers, has a plethora of blessings to share. I've got a crock going of pickles .. the big kind like you'd get at State Fair.

    The same plants planted at a Women's Community Center are doing great, and lots of cucumbers are growing. I've also planted some old corn types there, the leaves are so pretty you could use them as a decorative plant. I plant corn in blocks with pumpkins. Most corn can be eaten young, but I also like the colored corn in tortillas, if I can get enough to grind. The japonica corn is absolutely beautiful with its variegated leaves. I'm looking forward to having some blue and red and variegated husks for Harvest Dolls.