Once you see your plants flowering and bearing fruit, it will be addictive.
Struggle is an exciting challenge. I make sure you can't stop yourself when you see the beautiful flowers have turned into fresh fruit.
It happened to me. The struggles that were not easy in handling my plants actually made me even more curious and did not give up.
I'm not a pro farmer. Still a beginner but I really want to continue learning to be able to grow more types of vegetables and fruit in my organic garden.
In this blog, I will tell you about my struggle to grow cucumbers organically. I planted a smaller type of baby cucumber. That's because I don't like big cucumbers because they have seeds in the cucumber flesh.
I admit that my cucumbers look unhealthy at the moment, but thankfully my cucumber plants are bearing fruit. I'm happy that even today I can harvest them almost 50 days after planting.
I learned several things from the condition of my cucumber plants and I hope to increase my yields in the future for other cucumber plants.
Temperature Too Hot
In several journals that I read, my cucumber plants had yellow spots and were growing stunted because of too much sunlight and hot temperatures.
Indeed, currently the temperature in the area I live in is 28-33 degrees Celsius. I also have to water the cucumber plants twice a day.
Temperatures that are too hot also cause my cucumber plants to only have male flowers. That makes me sad. But I didn't give up.
There Are Only Male Flowers
There are two possibilities. Lack of nutrition, also too hot conditions. For nutrition, I only provide organic fertilizer from liquid compost.
It's just that, in the beginning, I wasn't consistent in providing organic fertilizer once a week. I regret the messy fertilization schedule. Organic fertilizer is not as powerful as chemical fertilizer. So I have to pay more attention to a consistent fertilization schedule.
Because of these problems, initially my cucumber plants only had male flowers without female flowers. That means there will be no cucumber fruit 😥
I try to continue to improve the situation by consistently providing organic fertilizer. Then finally in early March my cucumber plants had female flowers! I'm very excited.
Hello, Cucumber Fruits
I don't do manual pollination. I let nature work by itself to find out whether it really works or not. In the end, there are cucumber fruits that start to get bigger.
My five cucumber plants bear fruit even though the size of the plants is not very tall. Cucumber fruits are not the same size, varying in size.
Today I can harvest my cucumbers. Although it's actually a bit late for one cucumber. I thought the cucumber would grow bigger again, but it was a baby cucumber. So the size cannot be bigger.
A Week Ago Condition
I think the conditions a week ago were actually better with the cucumbers still being longer. But today the form has changed. 😂😂😂
At least there is a lesson learned. I can no longer be late harvesting my cucumbers. So, today I harvested two cucumbers as a start.
Even though my cucumbers are only small, I really like these baby cucumbers!
I didn't even expect the taste to be sweeter and fresher than the cucumbers I bought at the market. Also, the unique aroma of cucumber!
These baby cucumbers make me want to garden again and again. Little by little, but fun!
Thank you for reading my blog and reblog if you want my blog this time worthy of reading by others.
Best Regards,
Anggrek Lestari
Anggrek Lestari is an Indonesian fiction writer who has published two major books. Now She is a full-time content creator. She has a goal to share life, poem, and food content that makes others happy and can get inspiration.
Contact Person: authoranggreklestari@gmail.com
Discord: anggreklestari#3009