It didn’t work.

Cucumbers and zucchini are large plants that take 3′ x 3′ worth of space each—neither of which I like. Because I wasn’t sure how this bed’s soil conditions were, it caused severe blossom-end rot that prevented any harvest of big beef tomatoes, I figured it could serve as a backup bed. So, I planted two rows of carrots, none of which sprouted, and two zucchini plants; I started some cucumbers in planters and then moved them out to the same bed.

The result was a dismal failure of slow death from pH imbalance. The plants paled, wouldn’t grow, and produced nary a blossom.

Or so I thought.

Roughly a month ago I noticed that one cucumber plant had not only grown and produced leaves, but had blossomed. This was strange: a weak and sickly plant had recovered in sub-optimal soil. Skip forward a month to the present, and that first cucumber plant is now 4′ long, furnished three good cucumbers, and has several more fruits growing. My other cucumber has recovered as well and has two inch-long cucumbers already. In addition, one of my zucchini plants recovered and has already blossomed twice (I think I even see a tiny squash growing).

Go figure!

Because I was pretty sure the bed wasn’t going to thrive, I let it go fallow; if I were to weed now, my semi-artificial soil would crumble to pieces. That first year I followed the Square Foot Gardening method in making a raised bed, including making my own soil. The pH problem stems from what the soil came from (equal parts each): vermiculite, peat moss, compost. The compost we got was bagged (fully dead, I’m afraid) and was probably on the acidic side. When I mixed the already acidic peat moss with the compost, I inadvertently made it more acidic.

Instead of letting this bed continue to go to waste, I have a plan for it at the end of this season.  And, hopefully, I’ll figure out a good way to mix it in and improve the soil in my new beds.

Wide shot of my garden.

I’ve got two kinds of lettuce, romaine (the variety is rare, called De Morges Braun) with a very round head, and leaf lettuce (Black Seeded Simpson).  The romaine, as I said, is quite rare and produces a round head that has brown speckling on the upper halves of its leaves; I’ve found it to be a hardy variety.  The Black Seeded Simpson is a bright colored lettuce with extremely wavy leaves.  What you cannot see in the pictures is the salad I harvested for the 4th of July, for 9 people.

In addition, I’ve got wax beans growing in my garden. I’ve already had one small harvest, enough for a serving for one, of these delicious beans. I love that they are bush beans, because I don’t have to worry about providing a structure to climb.

This morning while watering the garden I saw something on my cucumber plant that I’d missed: a huge fruit!  Technically, since it’s a pickling cucumber, the fruit is supposed to be picked before it becomes fat, but when I picked it this morning it weighed half a pound.  Yes! a half-pound pickling cucumber!