Nancy loves to can pickles. Well, I’m not sure if she loves to can them but I know everybody in my family loves to eat her sweet, crunchy homemade pickles.
My wife has a work-out friend at the gym that in seasons past has grown enough cucumbers to supply the Vlasic Company.
Really.
She has a big garden supplemented with lots of manure and it’s been all-we-want cukes from her plot for at least two years.
But this year, her friend has decided to skip the cucumbers altogether. That means the pressure is now on us to grow enough cukes to can.
Nancy has about six plants started in large pots on the carport, and they are doing well. But last week, I went to Lowe’s to buy a few already started cucumber vines – just in case. All the containers, though, had about six sprouts each, but I bought them anyway, thinking I might be able to pull a few up sprouts and restart some of them in separate pots. Nancy is good at that. Me? Not so much. I usually end up with dead sprouts.
But not this time. I lucked out.
I had a few of those small organic Jiffy cups in my office, about 2 inches tall, so I packed some potting soil inside, wet them thoroughly and eased the seedlings in carefully. The little seedlings were hanging on for dear life and I figured they would be toast in three days, when I came back to work.
However, I had some of those short, wide plastic cups like you would get wine in at a banquet. I filled the cups about halfway with water and dropped the Jiffy cups in the glasses and crossed my fingers.
When I returned after 3 days, the little cukes were reaching for the stars. They had been able to draw water by osmosis, I suppose.
Anyway, they are alive and healthy and next time I use the starter pots, I’ll know to drop them in a plastic wine cup.
Voila!