Tag Archives: cucumbers

Garden Advice

7 Steps to Saving Cucumber Seed

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Cucumbers are one of the most iconic veggies of summer! There’s nothing like a cool, crisp cucumber that you’ve grown yourself. If you love cucumbers as much as we do, you might want to consider saving some seed from your favorite variety. Cucumbers are an excellent plant to start with if you’re new to seed saving.

  1. Make sure you’ve isolated your varieties.

    If you planted multiple cucumbers and want pure seed, they need to be isolated. You can use time to isolate them by growing one variety early and another late. You can also use distance, keeping varieties separated by 1/8 mile for home use and a minimum of 1/4 to 1 mile for pure seed.

    However, if your varieties aren’t isolated perfectly, you can save seed anyway. You may end up with a cross you love.

  2. Make sure you have enough plants.

    You can save viable seed from a single cucumber plant. However, to maintain a variety over time, it’s best to grow at least five plants. If you’re saving seeds to preserve a rare variety, we recommend you grow and save seed from at least 25 plants.

  3. Select your best plants.

    You should try to save seed from plants that have performed the best through the season. Select those that are healthy, vigorous, and disease free with good-tasting fruit. You can find a list of other traits you may want to consider when saving seed here.



  4. Let your cucumbers ripen fully.

    Don’t pick seed cucumbers at the same time you pick them for eating. For seed saving, you want cucumbers to be fully ripe. They should be large, rounded, and yellow to orange.

    It’s best to leave them on the vine for a few weeks after the color change. They’ll begin to soften and should pull easily from the vine. If that isn’t possible, you can let them continue to ripen and soften in a basket out of direct sunlight. When you cut the cucumber open, the seeds should appear large and full.

  5. Harvest your seeds.

    To harvest the seeds, it’s easiest to cut the cucumbers lengthwise and scoop the seeds out with a spoon. Place all of the pulp and seeds into glass jars. Mason jars are ideal for this.

  6. Ferment and clean your seeds.

    In order to remove all the pulp from the seeds, you need to let them ferment a bit. Add a little water to your jars of seeds and pulp. The containers need airflow into them, so don’t put a lid on. However, you can cover them with a bit of cloth or coffee filter and a rubber band to keep out fruit flies.

    Let this mixture ferment for three days, stirring it once a day. It’s okay if you notice some mold growing on top. After three days, add a more water and stir the mixture again. The viable seeds will sink while the pulp and bad seeds will float, and you can pour them off the top. Drain your viable seeds.

  7. Dry your seeds.

    Lay your seeds on a single layer on paper towels, coffee filters, old window screens, or dehydrator screens (don’t dehydrate them, though). Let your seeds air dry naturally until they can be snapped in half.

  8. Store your seeds.

    Store seeds in an airtight container in a cool dark place. Cucumber seeds will remain viable for five years or more under the right conditions.

    Learn how to do a germination test here.

Are you saving seeds this year? Tag us on Facebook or use the hashtag #southernexposureseed on Instagram to show us your projects

Garden Advice

7 Crops You Can Plant in July

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Spring and summer always seem to go so fast. There’s so much to get done in the garden. We’re headed into July, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t still get some plants in. Here are a few summer crops you can sow this month.

Beans

Beans are a productive, quick-growing crop that’s perfect for sowing late in the season. You’ll need to water them thoroughly, especially as they get established, but they tolerate the midsummer heat with no problems. 

For late sowings, some of our favorites are bush snap beans like Provider, Royalty Purple Pod, Contender (Buff Valentine), and Blue Lake Bush (Blue Lake 274). These varieties are all ready to harvest in 48 to 55 days. 

Collards

The classic hot weather green, collards can be sowed right through summer. During the summer, they’re lovely shredded and added to stir-fries, salads, and slaws or blended into smoothies. As the weather cools in the fall, you can add them to soups and chili. They can also be fermented to make kraut or kimchi.

Some of our favorite varieties for summer planting include Georgia Green (Georgia Southern, Creole) Collards, Green Glaze Collards, Whaley’s Favorite Cabbage Collards, and Vates Collards. They’re ready to harvest in as little as 68 days. 

Corn

Corn thrives during the summer heat. It’s an excellent crop for succession planting to spread out your harvest. When selecting a variety, check the days to harvest to ensure that you choose a variety that will mature before your area’s first frost date. 

A few quick maturing varieties include Buhl Sweet Corn (81 days), Chires Baby Sweet Corn (75 days), Country Gentleman Sweet Corn (93 days), and Bodacious RM (75 days) which is one of the few hybrid corn varieties we carry. 

You may notice a few dent corn varieties, such as Reid’s Yellow Dent Corn, have two maturity dates listed. The first date is for roasting, and the second is for grinding and drying. If you’re interested in roasting, Reid’s (85/110 days), Hickory King (85/110 days), and Hickory Cane (85/110 days) are options.

Homemade Pickles Pickling Cucumber

Cucumbers

Both pickling and slicing cucumbers are dependable summer crops. They can be sown in July and tolerate the heat well as long as they’re watered consistently. 

Some of our favorite options for pickling cucumbers include Arkansas Little Leaf (59 days) and Homemade Pickles (55 days). They’re both vigorous, productive, and disease resistant. 

If you’re want to sow slicing cucumbers, this July some of our favorites include White Wonder (58 days), which is very productive in hot weather, and Marketmore 76 (57 days) and Straight Eight (57 days), which are very dependable and productive. 

Southern Peas

Southern peas are also called cowpeas, crowder peas, field peas, or black-eyed peas. They’re an incredibly productive staple crop that can be grown when both days and nights are warm for a period of 60-90 days.

They’re drought-resistant and do well in warm soil. We still have some varieties available. However, the pandemic seed orders sales surge has especially affected our inventory for southern peas. New seed crops are being grown out – we’ll have more seed available again in Nov/Dec 2021!

Summer Squash and Zucchini

Summer squash and zucchini thrive in the summer heat. They’re quick to mature and are ready to harvest in between 48 and 68 days. 

Some of the varieties we recommend include Black Beauty Zucchini (48 days), Early Prolific Straightneck Summer Squash (48 days), Benning’s Green Tint Summer Squash (52 days). They’re vigorous and productive. 

Swiss Chard

Many greens don’t stand up to the summer heat, but Swiss chard will produce all summer and into fall. They can be harvested in as little as 25 days for baby greens or 50 to 60 days for mature leaves.

Perpetual Spinach (Leaf Beet Chard) is a great hot weather substitute for spinach in the southeast. Rainbow Swiss chard is a great way to add both beauty and flavor to the garden. Barese is sweeter than other chard varieties.

Add a few of these to your garden this July for delicious late summer and fall harvests. 

Recipes

10 Easy Ways to Use Cucumbers

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Cucumbers don’t seem to share the notorious reputation of summer squash for its summertime over abundance however they are productive. They’re also not quite as easy to preserve as something like tomatoes which are easily frozen, canned, or dried for delicious meals later on. If you’ve got baskets of cucumbers piling up on your kitchen counter try a few of these easy suggestions to make the most of your summer bounty.

Add them to smoothies.

Cucumbers are cool, mild, and refreshing making them an excellent choice for summertime smoothies.

Pickle them.

If you’re up for a more traditional preservation route there are many recipes for water bath canning pickles. Check out these recipes from Ball:

Kosher Dill Pickles

Bread and Butter Pickles

If canning isn’t your thing, try checking recipes for “refrigerator pickles.” These can’t be kept at room temperature like their canned counterparts but they will keep in the fridge for a long time.

Make frozen treats.

Cucumbers make wonderful additions to homemade fruit sorbets or popsicles. They’re nice and juicy without a lot of intense flavor.

Toss them in drinks.

Cucumbers are an awesome homegrown way to add excitement to your drinks. Sangria, gin & tonics, or even ice water with your fresh cucumber slices is sure to impress your guests.

Make gazpacho.

For those who haven’t heard of it gazpacho is a soup made from blended vegetables that’s served cool. It makes a great summer lunch and there’s tons of recipes to suit everyones’ tastes. Check out this recipe from the BBC, Green Cucumber & Mint Gazpacho.

Ferment them.

Fermented foods are great for your gut and pretty easy to make. Try this recipe for awesome fermented cucumber pickles.

Try a different cucumber salad.

Tossing a cucumber slices onto a plain salad can quickly get boring but their are plenty of recipes if you’re willing to branch out try searching for Asian cucumber sesame salad recipes or check Pinterest for more recipes.

Add them to a stir fry.

It may sound a bit odd if you’re accustomed to only eating fresh cucumbers but cucumbers are delicious in a stir fry or alone. Try frying some with a touch of oil, soy sauce, and ginger.

Make fresh salsa.

Cucumbers can easily be added to fresh salsa recipes like this one for taco night!

Make your own soap.

If you’re into crafts or diy projects or have ever tried soap making you may want to try adding some of your cucumbers. Search “cucumber soap” for recipes.

As is the case with many vegetables cucumbers are actually very versatile. If you’ve got an abundance this season trying a few new recipes can help you eat more from your garden and spend less time in the grocery store. What’s your favorite way to use cucumbers?

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