Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Cukes... Yum!

I was so happy to get a chance to enjoy the first of our cukes from the garden. It was delicious and HUGE! Take a look:

I put the comparison shot in there for you to demonstrate how fantastic this cuke turned out. With all the excitement, we started to pull out the seeds as we ate the chopped up cuke (to plant next year).

Unfortunately, I found out later from Home Hort Hints, "Cucumber seeds at the eating stage are not ripe and will not germinate if saved. You must allow the fruit and seed to fully mature."

After looking into it a bit more, I found out how complex it will be to save these seeds from motherearthnews.com. It will involve allowing the cucumbers to ripen on the vine until they turn yellow and the vines die. Then, allow the cucumber to get soft before scooping out the seed mass and letting the seeds ferment in a jar of water. Then, you have to dry the seeds out.

The good news is that if you are able to get through this process the seeds will last for 8-10 years. I'm not sure that we will have enough cukes to decide to save one for seeds, and we still may have seeds left over from the beginning of the season. But it was truly an exciting evening.

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