Japanese Cucumber

My Japanese Cucumber project has been a most satisfying experience. I threw the seeds haphazardly into the "magic pot". I call it the "magic pot" because everything that we have put into that pot grows. Rubber trees, longan trees, salak trees, curry leaf trees and orange trees... That's a great many trees I now realise. The magic pot belonged to Little Boy. It was his very own pot for growing his very own garden. But seeing how magical the pot was, I devised a shameless scheme to get the pot for myself. And get it, I did. And now that we are eating my cucumbers at dinner, I find it very hard to even feel guilty about my shameless behavior towards Little boy.

Anyway, the little Japanese Cucumber seedlings grew about 2 inches a day and in 2 weeks were taller than I, crawling enthusiastically up the trellis occasionally glancing backwards at me as if to say "Look Ma, how high I have climbed!" Then they surprised me with a dozen or so little yellow flowers. Some had mini-cucumbers tagged on at the bottom. Others didn't. I then learnt that the ones with mini-cucumbers were the girl flowers and those others, were the boy flowers. I learnt also that I had to cut off the boy flowers, peel off its petals, and use its anthers to pollinate the girl flowers. Otherwise, the little mini-cucumbers will shrink quite away. Needless to say, I set about the job of artificial plant insemination... oops pollination... with great gusto! I made sure every girl flower had at least 2 pollinations.

Everyday, I watered with a dilute solution of fertiliser feed, because the gurus on my gardening forum say that is better to feed often, but with very dilute feed. After feeding, I would sit down in front of the "magic pot" to admire the growing cucumbers, and count them. The whole family has made much fuss of my big cucumbers. We have eaten 2 with much ooh-ing and ah-ing. Now, I feel inspired to move forth into even greater farming exploits - batavia lettuce, brinjal, okra, capsicum.