I Have Dumb Cucumbers

I plant my pickling cucumbers on either side of two long trellises. The idea being that the cucumber plants will latch onto and climb up the trellises as they grow saving garden space, keeping the to-be pickles clean and enabling easy upright picking for the harvester. That would be me.

Each year when the vines start to grow, they turn directly away from the trellises and run in the opposite direction. This means that I have to go down the row of young plants tying each one to the trellis (creating kind of a hostage situation) so they get the idea and start to climb up the trellis.

It's a job that is slow, extremely awkward crawling along on my hands and knees bending nearly to ground level to grab the little buggers and tie them up. I don't relish the task.

This year I decided to show the cucumbers who was in charge. No more hand coddling. The vines were going to have to learn to climb on their own.

Uh-huh, sure. Just look at the mess I've got. Although a small (very small) percentage of the vines were smart enough to grab onto the nice trellises provided, most of them have formed this matted mess on the ground between the trellises that I have to painstakingly pick my way through when harvesting the cucs.

Now, of course, I'm kicking myself for not taking the time to tie up the vines. Sometimes I just fall off the learning curve.