Cucumbers fresh from the garden are a crunchy, flavorful treat. Cucumbers plants can crawl along the ground, but prefer to climb. Any sort of structure with gaps will do. They are not picky and will scale almost anything. The cucumbers hide amongst the twisting vines. Sometimes they nestle in so well they are a little hard to collect from between the prickly stalks that make some people itch.
One way to make them easier to pick is to grow them up a structure that leans on an angle. While the plants scramble up the leaning tower, the weight of the vegetables causes them to dangle freely. This makes for easy picking. My brother brought this idea to our family garden a couple of years ago and this year we added a second tipped trellis.
We grew three types of cucumbers this season: ‘Little Tykes, ‘Miniature White’ and a more standard variety called ‘General Lee’. All three are delicious.
My sister in law brought an amazing cucumber salad to dinner the other night. She claims she got the recipe from Jamie Oliver, but she is such a good cook I would have believed her if she said she made it up herself.
The recipe can be found here.
She left out the black olives and red chile because she didn’t have them in her pantry. I didn’t miss them a bit. The fresh snap of “ultra –local” cucumbers was all we needed.
