Garden Notes

Cucumber vines thriving in compost bin

Every year I plant cucumbers in the vegetable garden and usually I get some early cucumbers. Then cucumber beetles find our garden, infect the cucumber vines with a mosaic virus and our plants all wilt. If we escape the mosaic virus, our vines usually get powdery mildew and stop producing. It is all very discouraging!

This year I decided to try growing cucumbers in compost. I chose the “Muncher Burpless Cucumber” from the garden center because it was supposed to be resistant to the cucumber mosaic virus. When I was ready to plant cucumbers around Memorial Day, our compost bin was almost full of raw materials in the process of decomposing. I added a couple of inches of composted cow manure to top it off, planted my seeds and hoped for the best

The young plants emerged right on schedule and loved their warm sunny spot. They grew quickly and filled up the compost bin with healthy cucumber vines. I started to get a lot of cucumbers, almost too many for us to eat and we started sharing our extra produce with the neighbors.

Then a weird thing happened. I went out to gather cucumbers for supper one evening in July and noticed that some of the cucumbers had been half eaten. It seems that rodents had moved in, were beating us to the cucumbers and eating as much as they could reach. They were also ripping some of the vines down and causing a lot of damage. After a couple weeks of ruined produce, I moved the “Easy Outdoor Mousetrap” to a spot right below the compost bin.

For the next few days I found mice, chipmunks and meadow voles in the trap. I caught 2 chipmunks, 6 mice and 3 meadow voles. No wonder the poor cucumbers were decimated! Eventually I stopped catching rodents and moved the trap elsewhere. The cucumber vines have recovered somewhat and I am once again harvesting cukes.

Even with rodent war, this was the best cucumber year we have ever had and I am not sure if it was because of the compost or because of the warm weather. So far the recovering cucumber vines are healthy, virus free and the rodents seem to be dining elsewhere!