Harvesting the first Cucumbers

It has been an anxious couple of months waiting to see what the cucumbers would amount to.  I had to replant them because over half my plants simply didn't come up the first time around.  It has been slow going for a while after they sprouted.  With all the heat we are having they have picked up the pace in the last week or two and have started putting out an abundance of flowers.

 

The older plants have grown much larger than the second planting plants and I have been able to start training them up the sides of my trellis.

Next year my cucumber trellis is going to involve some sort of fencing I think because the plants are having a hard time staying on the trellis.  Their tendrils can't wrap around the thick and slippery pvc pipe.  It seems to help to wrap two plants in opposite directions on the same pole.  Their fuzzy skins stick like velcro to each other and help to hold each plant up.

 

There are many tiny cucumbers in the making on the older plants as well.

The younger plants aren't quite at this stage yet but several have started putting out flowers in earnest.

 

This is the first cucumber harvest.  I know they look small but I am growing pickling cucumbers.  If I let them get too much bigger they will start to get larger seeds and become bitter.  I will need to wait until my cucumbers harvests are a little bigger before I can start making pickles.  Two cucumbers don't really fill a jar well.  Hopefully pickling season will commence in a couple short weeks now that the garden is really growing at full speed.