How to Grow Sweet Cucumber

Where do you get to eat sweet cucumbers?

Well, you may have not ever seen or heard this kind of thing before. For your information, it's true. Usually the Sweet Cucumber people usually talk about is a species of it's own. This sweet cucumber is not found in the shopping malls or markets. But what I'm about to show you now is the common cucumber or the cucumber we usually find in markets for cheap prices:

As the cucumber shown above, most of you should know what species it is. This is a normal common cucumber which is grown by me. But how do you make it sweet? 

Okay, here's something I would really like to share with you if you are interested in eating sweet cucumbers. This is an experiment I did to find out this thing.

First, I referred to the first step to how you get a cucumber from it's vine- pollination. Pollination is the main factor the Cucurbita Family gets it's fruits. Cucurbitas consist of cucumber, pumpkins, squashes and gourds. Pollination is when a male flower's pollen is dusted or it touches the stigma of a female flower. Okay, this may sound confusing but the most important part is to identify a male and female flower, here is a photo:

Male flowers

Female and male flower comparison

Females have a small cucumber below the flower which is known as the ovary. The stigma of the female is right in the flower and the anther of the male is also inside the flower, The anther contains pollen while the stigma waits for the pollen to go on it. 

Pollination is commonly done by bees for thousands of years. Flowers and bees help each other to survive until now. But if you are lack of bees and pollinators or you want Sweet Cucumbers, you can hand-pollinate them. This is the first step, there's one more.

Hand-pollination is very easy. You just need a male and female flower. After pollination, the female turns into the fruit we eat and the male is not needed and can be discarded. When doing hand-pollination, you may use a clean smaller paint brush or just by doing this, please check out the link.Pollination of Cucumbers. To summarise it, just brush pollen from the male into the female flower.

This is exactly how you get the sweet cucumber. The more pollen the female flower gets the sweeter and better it will be. The next factor is the right time to harvest the cucumber. This is when you see the cucumber leave it's spines and start to develop the sandy green skin. This is just the right time to harvest, here's a very good example of my sweet cucumber:

And lastly, the environment the cucumber is living in. The environment must be sunny, less weeds or plants that it may compete with, and adequate water for the plant. All you can do to reduce the stress in the plant. If the plant is in stress the fruits will grow to become sour. So it's good to do some talking to the plant like how I do to talk to it sometimes and encouragement. In my beliefs, plants have feelings but very very low conciousness, but they still have feelings. So spend some time and talk to it about good stuff.

So that's all for today on how to get sweet cucumber.

Thank you very much for reading this.

Your acknowledgement about this is very much appreciated by me!

GOOD GARDENING!!!!

WHY CAN'T MY COMPUTER DETECT VIDEOS FROM MY PHONE WHEN CONNECTED TO USB??

I was trying to send some video files from my Samsung Galaxy S3 mini to my Windows 7 via USB. All I saw was pictures, no videos, sounds, music or anything else. What's wrong?! Is it the computer or my phone??

I would much appreciate an answer for this :)

phone repair malaysia

Hi there! 

I would like to hire someone who's skilled in fixing Samsung phone screens using the not-including lcd screen way which means only removing the gorilla glass without damaging the lcd screen and then pasting the new screen onto the phone. Anyone in Malaysia knows how please comment below . offered payments for fixing the phone are around 100 or more MYR. But if you are not skilled please do not approach me because charges may be high for fixing the entire lcd. For more details on what this is about check YouTubehttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QQO7ZvSa5Lw. But do keep in mind that this phone of mine is the Samsung galaxy s3 mini. Spare parts are provided. 

Thank you

                                Gourds!

If anybody knows what gourd this is that I'm growing, please comment below.

here are some pictures:

                         The little fruit which I hand-pollinated

                                            The female flowers of the gourd plant

                     T

                 Another picture of the fruit I hand- pollinated

           
            A little female flower that failed and the gourd leaves in the                                                   background

The leaves of the gourd plant are hairy beneath but spiny on the surface. The young fruits have a little striped. The flowers both male and female bloom nocturnally (which shows it's a hardshell). The flowers are white in colour (which also shows it's a hardshell).
The vine grows branches in all directions and are very long maybe 10 feet maximum.

Thanks!

Gourds

Hi there!! first I wanna thank you for visiting my blog!! what you're gonna be seeing now are my baby gourd fruits!

I'm not quite sure what gourds these are, but I know they're hardshell gourds because they bloom white flowers nocturnally.

                      as a little flower, I hand pollinated this the 

    previous night

                    the gourd fruit growing larger the next day

                    
                Comparison between original size and what's now

                      
                     the gourd growing bigger and bigger as days pass

          the gourd fruit four days old compared to original size

the gourd fruit five days old (today- 27.7.2013). Larger!!

    
Please hang around my blog or follow me for I'll be updating this post as the gourd increases in size!! Thanks for visiting!!

Gourds Problem

Hi, i was pondering over a problem on my gourds. i read many websites saying that only the main vine produces male flowers. my gourd's main vine's been eaten and it grew a branch replacing the main vine. now this branch is also growing some more branches along it. will my gourds still produce male and female flowers?? please comment below for i need an answer pls!!

above here is my gourd vine: there are two vines, left is branch, right is main not producing any shoots.

Thank you!!

How to Grow Gourds

What are Gourds?

Gourds are vine plants related to the Cucurbita family( Cucurbitaceae), Lagenaria family and Luffa. They are related to squashes, pumpkins, cucumbers, marrows and courgettes. Gourds have been cultivated since long ago, about 8-9 thousand years ago. Gourds are more of Summer plants or Tropical plants. They usually grow in the summer in four-seasoned countries. They like warm to hot climates.

Gourds are well known for their ornamental qualities. They can come in many shapes and sizes: bottle shaped, constricted in the middle, long with handles, wine bottle, sphere shaped e.g. The sizes can reach up to 1.5 metres in length or even more. Hard-shelled gourds are usually dried and crafted for decorative purposes. In other countries such as India, Africa, Mexico and China, gourds are used as containers after dried and the seeds removed. The word "bottle" in bottle gourd comes from it's use as a bottle for filling liquid or medicine (in China). The Chinese believe that bottle gourds are sacred  fruits that brings good luck, fortune and prosper to a certain family. It is called fengshui. Bottle Gourds in Chinese belief are also known to get rid of negative forces from a household. In chinese, gourds are known as Hulu 葫籚.

Sowing
1. Prepare an accurate mixture and ratio of garden mix, gourd seeds, pot (not necessary), container with water (not necessary).

2. Soak the gourd seeds in water for about 24 hours ( unnecessary). This is to give the seeds some sort of head start. The water will be absorbed and alerts the seeds that it's time to grow for they have been "hibernating" for so long.

3. Sow them into the potting or garden mix. Place the seeds on top of the soil, then sprinkle about nearly a handful of more potting mix on top of them. Then water the seeds about ratio of: Potting mix 1 handful: Water 30 millilitres. Soil must have good water drainage system.

4. The seeds will germinate usually in a few days to a week. If you find the seeds not germinated for after a week still, do not give up because gourds may take very long time to germinate, taking from over 1-6 weeks. But once the vines form, you can almost see the movement!

5. If you want equal shaped gourds, it's a good thing to let the plant crawl over a trellis or fence. The gourds will appear hanging down the vine.This gives them balanced and even shape usually if they are hard shells or Cucurbita. if you have land in your garden, you may allow the plant to creep on the ground.

Caring and Protecting
1. Gourds don't like their roots to be disturbed. This may affect its ability of bearing fruits. For example, the gourd plant may be capable of bearing about 20 fruits, but if the roots damaged or disturbed, maybe it will only produce 10 or lesser or even none. This is a very important step for gourds.
2. The easiest way of preventing this to happen is to quickly transplant the gourd plant to the permanent spot for it once four true leaves develop. It's better not to keep moving the plant from place to place once the vine starts. Or if you have already sowed them into the permanent spot, you may leave it there to mature,

3. Pest are a very annoying problems to gourds and all other plants. Gourds are very loved by pests such as Cucumber beetles, weevils, whitefly aphids and squash bugs. These are only the main pests. There are certainly many more pests that may affect the plant like mealy bugs and even ants. If you see lots of ants all over the plant that seems like feeding on something or gaining some benefits, there is a problem then.

4. To solve this problem about pests, you may buy some eco-friendly or organic substances or insecticide to get rid of the pests. They can also be removed manually. You just gotta pick them out one by one and dispose of them. This is rather hard and more work to do but is safer to the plant than insecticide.

Pollination of Gourds
1. Gourds very easily cross-pollinate with each other. If there are many varieties of gourds in your garden, the fruit you get will be very hard to be a pure gourd which makes it a hybrid. For example letting the bees do the work. This will not keep the gourd as a pure gourd. 

2. Most farmers prevent this from happening. This is because they want to keep the seeds pure for the rest of the growing season. But for people who like to have surprises in gourds in the sense of their fruit shape, taste (some gourds are edible) or whatsoever, you may just leave the insects to do the work. The cultivate the purity of the gourds, the easiest way to do is to hand pollinate them.

3.Hand pollinating is very easily done. the first step is to prepare a paint brush (not necessary). Then, find a male flower on the plant together with a female flower. To differ male and female flowers: females have the shape of a small little baby gourd at the base of the flower, males lack this growth. Next, (if you are using paint brush) dip the brush into the male flower and collect pollen into the brush. After this, brush the female flower gently with the pollen covered brush. After you see the female flower covered in pollen, your work is done. 

4. For those who don't have brushes, you can just easily pluck the male flower from the plant, peal it's petals and rub and dust it over the female flower. this can be done with one male flower to over 8 female flowers if you donate the pollen not too generously. 

Harvesting 
1. For gourds that are meant to be crafted, they shall be left on the vine to dry naturally. Once they start to dry is when the stem connecting the gourd to the vine turns completely brown and hardens. This shows that the plant is no longer providing the gourds with nutrients. by seeing this you can already cut or break the gourd off its vine.

2. Then, when the gourd shell hardens completely, it's time to start cleaning the outer shell which is heavily moulded. You will start by submerging the gourds in water and bleach in the ratio of 1 part of bleach to 7 parts of water. Use a rock or a heavy element to keep the gourds submerged since they are buoy-like fruits, filled with air.

3. After a few hours of soaking (DO NOT SOAK OVER 24 HOURS), prepare a scrub to scrub off the mould. Scrub the gourds like scrubbing dishes. Be careful not to scrub too hard for the gourds might crack.

Seed saving
1. Seed saving is usually done by all farmers for growing more for the next season. It's not hard to save gourd seeds, just follow the steps below one by one.

2. There are two ways of harvesting your gourds. The first is to leave them on the vine until they dry and harden. The other way is to pick to fruits when you noticed the stem connecting the gourd and the plant turns brown. You can get it off the vine with just a gentle tug. It's recommended better to pick the fruits after dried on vine.

3. If you intend to pick it right after the season, leave the gourds to  dry on the vine and harden right there. Then when the vine completely dies out, the gourds are ready to be harvested.

4. leave the gourd to completely dry in a dark warm place for over 2 weeks for those who are impatient. But for that can stand, leave the gourds in a warm dark place for over a month approximately. 

5. After leaving the gourds to dry, it's time to cut them open. If you want to make birdhouses, it's good to use a round-hole saw to make a hole in the bottom part of the gourd. If you are making containers or vases, cut the top open with a blade or a saw or whatever that can give it a good cut.

6. Once the gourds are opened and exposed, it's time to dig the seeds out. You may use a spoon or anything possible not to spoil the inner texture of the gourd. 

7. The seeds will come out with a lots and lots of pulp or membrane. Just one gourd can contain up to at least 50 seeds for the smaller type; some even reach up to 500 seeds per fruit.

8. Once the seeds and membranes are completely removed from the     fruit, leave the fruit aside and place the seeds in a cooling and dark place to dry. CAUTION: do not place seeds in hot or places to warm above 30 degrees celsius. Warmth is a common enemy to seed saving for gourds. Leave the seeds to dry fully for about a week or two.

9. Once the seeds are fully dried, fit them into envelopes or air tight plastic bags but not in warmth or hot places.

10. Well preserved seeds can be stored up to 5 years of time!


Anyway, those steps are the tips to growing successful gourds, for more information, please comment below on what you would like to know and I'll either make another post or comment back to you personally. Thanks for reading, good gardening!!

My gourds!!