{"id":5088,"date":"2007-11-15T08:00:07","date_gmt":"2007-11-15T15:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/2007\/11\/15\/readers-questions-cucumbers\/"},"modified":"2007-11-15T08:00:07","modified_gmt":"2007-11-15T15:00:07","slug":"readers-questions-cucumbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/2007\/11\/15\/readers-questions-cucumbers\/","title":{"rendered":"Readers&#8217; Questions: Cucumbers"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Hi Jackie-<br \/>\nMy question: We had a low water period this summer, &amp; I took to watering the garden (usually watered manually via rain barrels) with \u201chorse spit\u201d- my euphemism for old horse water that Deb changes each time she feeds the critters. With the low rainfall &amp; not wanting to tax the well, I figured, hey, free water!<\/p>\n<p>After using the \u201cHS\u201d water for a few weeks, my cukes went belly up. Now this was in August, &amp; as I haven\u2019t had a real cuke crop in about 10 years, I\u2019m not sure if they were just \u201cdone\u201d, or I killed them w\/HS. BTW, the rest of the garden fared very well through the HS episode.<\/p>\n<p>Thoughts? &amp; Thanks! You guys have a GREAT mag\u2026<br \/>\nJack Horan<br \/>\nMason, NH<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You&#8217;re safe.\u00a0 It wasn&#8217;t the horse spit in the  water that did in your cukes.\u00a0 Cucumbers produce  very well in July, but are about done in August, especially with heat.\u00a0 To make them last longer,  keep them severely picked; if you let a few  &#8220;yellow boats&#8221; mature, the vines think they&#8217;re  all done.\u00a0 Also, when it&#8217;s very hot and dry, be  sure to mulch those cukes.\u00a0 It cools the roots  as well as keeps more moisture on them.\u00a0 Some  varieties produce longer, as well.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve found  that pickling cukes seem to quit and go yellow  sooner than say the Japanese climbing  cucumbers.\u00a0 But then, I usually make all my  whole pickle pickles from picklers and save my  long slim cukes for bread and butter type sliced  pickels and salad cukes, so it really doesn&#8217;t matter in the long run.<\/p>\n<p>The only plants I wouldn&#8217;t use &#8220;horse spit&#8221; on  would be greens or others that you eat the plant  directly.\u00a0 There could be bacteria in that water  you might not want on the lettuce, for  instance.\u00a0 Probably not, but it is a  possibility.\u00a0 My kids all licked off the horse  pasture salt blocks when they were little and they&#8217;re all still alive! &#8212; Jackie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi Jackie- My question: We had a low water period this summer, &amp; I took to watering the garden (usually watered manually via rain barrels) with \u201chorse spit\u201d- my euphemism for old horse water that Deb changes each time she feeds the critters. With the low rainfall &amp; not wanting to tax the well, I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5088"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5088\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}