Cucumber experiment

Cucumbers have been a great vegetable for us to experiment with growing indoors from home, they were easy to care for and giving us regular good sized, tasty cucumbers every week.

Cucumbers are a great summer addition to several dishes, drinks and salads, so we thought this is definitely a plant we want in our garden this year! We chose not to plant them outside as the cold ocean winds can be quite relentless at times, and guessed they wouldn't last long outside - so the experiment - grow our cucumbers indoors!

Our first task was to find a location we were happy to have a huge plant growing indoors, we had a well-spaced gap between the office table and the garden glass doors, which was the perfect size to fit a wooden palette.

So, with tools ready, we got to work! With a basic Idea of the structure I was hoping to build, with open sides and creating enough edges for the plant to grow along.

🌱 Fun fact:

Cucumbers can be grown hydroponically - without soil.

With a bit of measuring, cutting and screwing, our cucumber frame was ready, and fit perfectly in its place! We wanted this frame as close to the south facing glass doors as possible so the plant could receive large amounts sunshine, as well as the possibility of opening the doors to allow fresh air in.

Everyday was exciting watching how fast a cucumber was able to form. Tiny cucumbers were sprouting all over the place, with the beautiful large yellow flowers adding a pretty dash of colour to the house. This image with me holding the cucumber shows how big they were able to grow, and this was from a restricted plant in a pot, and indoors!

The cucumbers grew fantastically well, working their way up our home-built frame, which turned out to be a great size. Sadly, the plant started to die... my design work became quite hectic and we went away for a couple of holidays. Even though I tried to care for it, I think it was a combination of either watering too much or too little, and I should have given the plant more liquid feed to ensure they had adequate nutrients.

Once the plant is weakened and lacking nutrients it was more susceptible to disease, sadly the leaves started to turn yellow and dry up, and also started to get taken over by spider mites, even though the plant was still trying to produce more cucumbers, so we decided to remove the plant completely.

We did plant 2 seedlings in one large pot, along with 2 nasturtium plants - looking back on it now realising how big a cucumber plant and nasturtium plants can get - they need plenty of nutrition to grow the veggies, so growing 2 plants in one pot, is a bit tight) - but it was a fun experiment.

We definitely count this as a great success, because of the quantity of cucumbers we were able to get out of it, even though it was growing in a restrained container. Although next year I think we will change up the plan and try grow the cucumber elsewhere.....we will see what happens.

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Thanks for reading, if this interested you make sure to share with others who are growing vegetables from home, and would love to know your experiences, tips and stories too 🌱