This year’s troubles started right at seed planting stage, pretty much for all my plants, but particularly for my cucumbers. I was so convinced I had seeds left from last year, that when I went through my collection and couldn’t find any, not even the old packet for reference on what variety to get, I panicked. No pictures could be found, no lending of the seed packet to friends, I just could not trace it back.
This, of course, let to a visit to the seed store, where I went through every cucumber seed packet to see which one looked the most familiar, entirely based on vibes and faint memories, and yes, the description in the back. And I did find one, but time will tell if it’s the same. Thankfully I did remember to get self pollinating ones, that don’t require female and male flowers, and because of that, tend to give a higher yield of fruit.
Well, for whatever reason (probably because of the whole seed panic fiasco), I planted them at the same time as my tomatoes, which was way to early… I usually only start cucumbers about 2 weeks before I need to plant them outside, because the smaller the plants are, the smaller their root systems and there is less chance of shocking them while transplanting the seedlings into a new pot. Cucumber plants are very sensitive creatures, unlike tomatoes.
Chance would have it that, while the tomatoes actually took their sweet time to sprout and ended up being too small to plant outside when I needed to, the cucumbers got way too big by the time I transplanted them mid-May.
The tomato plants were a saga in themselves. Usually, tomatoes sprout very fast for me, 3 to 4 days, especially while using the heater “hack” (see my “Seed starting 101” post). But not this year. The first seedlings sprouted after 11 days, which is a crazy long amount of time for an impatient plant parent! And I only got maybe 2 plants from each variety coming up, which made them extra precious.
The last ones to sprout were the confetti, which are my absolute favorite variety. So, when I went to move the tray with the seedling from under the grow lights and heard the crack of a stem getting caught up in something, I just knew it had to be the flipping confetti. What did I do then, you ask, I buried the plant as deep as I could into the new pot, added a stick as support, and left the plant to fend for itself.
See I also had to travel on May 16th and was gone until the 4th of June, which meant that I really had no choice but to plant all my seedlings outside and hope for the best. I waited until the very last day to do it because the weather was still too cold at night, not even reaching 10 °C. As I said, all but one variety of tomatoes were way too small, the cucumbers were way too big, and the weather sucked. But I put on my sweater, hoodie on, gardening gloves, and got it done.
I luckily had a neighbor and a friend help with the watering of everything while I was away, and, upon returning home, I already had a fully grown balcony, full of beautiful, lush plants welcoming me back home. The poor confetti survived, but none of the cucumbers did, as you can see in the image at the top of this post. There was 1 out of 6 plants that was still hanging by a thread, but sadly also ended up perishing soon after. And thus, gardening priority number 1 was to start some more seeds indoors to replace them.
Well, to say it was a struggle is putting it mildly. I was very confident it would work, so confident that I replanted my seeds, and then offered the rest of the packet to a friend. This was when I realized my problem with germination this year was probably soil quality. I normally plant my seeds in all purpose potting mix, even if it does have big chunks in it for drainage. This year I wanted to give them the best chance, because I was on a bit of a tight schedule, so I used seed starting mix.
To my knowledge, seeds do not need nutrients to sprout, but this seems to have been a very big problem for my plants this year, and they were very dramatic about the whole thing. I don’t think I will use this mix again. Even after sprouting, the few seedlings I had were very yellow and fragile looking, so it did raise some questions for me.
Anyway, after asking for some seeds back, and desperately planting them for the 3rd time, I’m happy to say I have 5 cucumber plants now, outside and doing their thing. It will take them a while to grow and produce cucumbers though, so I’m not sure I’ll have some until September, but oh well.
Another struggle have been some tiny caterpillars that are just absolutely wreaking havoc on the trees around the house. Of course they also seem to absolutely love everything I’m growing in my pots on the balcony as well, except the tomatoes, which is already a relief. All my plants have tiny holes in them, and I have to do my caterpillar patrol every morning to try to spot and get rid of them.
This was also the first year that I had a bird attack one of my pepper plants. Right when my poor Trinidad Purple Chilly was already struggling from waterlogging while I was away on vacation. I had the pot inside a concrete vase to keep it stable, but, unfortunately, that also meant that all the water dripping down from each watering, was accumulating in the vase and keeping the roots way too wet. The signs were all there when I returned though (see image bellow), so I jumped right into action and took all the water out and let the soil dry out.
Some years in gardening are just a bit more of a struggle than others Either for technical issues, unpredictable weather, bad timing. So know that this is a big part of it, but not all. A good gardener can only adjust to the conditions and try to aid their plants as best as they can, according to their knowledge. One thing’s for sure, the amount of joy this little garden of mine has given me already this season is worth all the troubles as well, and I would replant those seeds as many times as I had to, to get anything close to this view:
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