Everyone, and everything, enjoys freedom.  Today I will tell you about the freedom of space, based on my cucumber plants’ growth and progress.

Gardening is such a fun hobby to practice, because not only it encourages you to spend time outside in the sun and fresh air, it also rewards you with continuous, pleasant surprises, while watching your plants grow and produce.

Being outdoors and working with plants, gives me so much pleasure and relaxation.   I am not a very dedicated gardener, since I have limited free time to spare, but I like to experiment with different plants and their growing progress.

This year I experimented with growing my cucumbers in different locations in the yard, because I always seem to face new challenges with achieving a successful cucumber crop.

Here you see one of my cucumber plants, growing in a window box, thus in a rather confined space.  The plant seems to be growing slowly, and trying to climb up on the fence to support it’s vine.  However, the leaves are fairly small, there are only few flowers, and the cucumbers are also quite small in size.  I even lowered the box halfway in the ground, to keep it cooler, but it really did not help much.

Growing any plants in pots, boxes, or other containers, requires regular daily watering, and fairly large container, as the sun warms up the soil very quickly, and dries it out, thus starves the plant.

This cucumber plant grows freely in my garden.  It also found a supporting fence to climb on, and seems to be much happier, than the one in the box.

Have you noticed how much larger it’s leaves are, and how much more vibrant the whole plant looks?  It’s roots have no limit of space, thus grow freely, and spread its vines in all directions.  The soil stays cool, being surrounded by other plants in the garden, providing additional shade during a hot day.  The plant has many flowers, hence lots of upcoming cucumbers.  It already produced several nice size cucumbers.

These cucumbers are planted outside of my garden patch, but still against the fence for support. They have total freedom, as you can see they enjoy the coolness of the soil and the grassy area protecting their tender roots from hot weather. Since I was just experimenting with these, the ground was not properly prepared for gardening.  All these plants have is the soil from their original pot. The cucumber plants are doing very nicely, but I am sure once the roots reach the regular soil, the plant will start to slow down is progress considerably.

Notice how healthy the vine and leaves look on these plants?  These plants enjoy their total freedom.  The cucumbers are even larger than the ones planted in the garden.  Now you know where I will plant cucumbers next year.  Yes, you guessed it; in freedom and definitely not in a box, or a pot.

I am already preparing a new patch next to my current garden, and will rearrange my perennial plants this fall, and follow a different spring planting plan.  I will need to add some natural fertilizer and my usual veggie scraps into my garden, to enrich the soil once again, as the nutrients from the original mushroom soil have depleted considerably.

So, what do I do with the cucumbers I grow?

I make Cucumber Salad, Tzatziki Dip, Vegetable Platter, add them to my tossed salad, or pickle them, using a very quick and easy method.

For easy pickling, all you have to do is to save the jar with the brine from your favorite store bought pickles.  Pick small cucumbers, wash them, and place them in a jar with the brine (Claussen are my favorite), keep them refrigerated for few days, and you have delicious pickles.  You can also cut your small cucumbers in half, lengthwise, for more flavor and faster pickling.  These pickles will be lighter in flavor from the store bought ones, but still very flavorful and easy to make.

photo credit: Daquella manera

If some may celebrate Christmas in July, then why shouldn’t I write a post about Poinsettia in September?

At the beginning of this year, right after the Christmas season, I wrote an article about Poinsettia (click on the highlighted word to see that post).

I encouraged you not to discard your Poinsettia into trash, but suggested to nurture it until next Christmas, to be pleasantly surprised with its renewed beauty, and to save money by not purchasing a new one.

Since I try to practice what I preach (most of the time), I saved my Poinsettia as well, and will keep you updated with its progress from now until Christmas.  If you can follow the instructions I provided in my first post, we both might have a free blooming Poinsettia for Christmas.

Let’s be optimistic, and don’t worry too much if we both fail, because there will be plenty pretty plants around the holidays to pick from, so we can start all over again.

Just don’t give up.  “They didn’t build Rome in one day either”!

I kept my Poinsettia on my kitchen table all the way until Easter, but had to move it to my living room at that point, so my family wouldn’t think that I had my seasons mixed up.

I did not pamper it much at all.  I just picked off any dried up leaves, and watered it as needed.

Believe me, there were times when I was ready to “throw in the towel”, when it started to look very shoddy.  However, that would have made me a quitter, and would have let you down, so I held on to it.  For a while my poinsettia looked like something from a recycling bin, with hardly any leaves on, but I kept my hope for better days ahead.

Once the weather warmed up,  I took my plant outside and kept it on a window sill in the sun-room.  Watered it regularly, but did not fertilize it at all ( I’m kind of wary of house plants fertilizers, as sometimes they do more harm than good to my house plants).

It started to grow new foliage, and looking like a healthy plant once again. This is how it looks like now, from  this  side.

I must tell you that one branch broke off, when the wind knocked it off my window sill one day,  otherwise it would have looked even better.

Here you have the other side.  As you can see, it looks quite nice from both sides.

Now, if you still have your plant, please read my first article for further, very important, directions on how to care for your revived Poinsettia plant, in order to have it bloom once again in December.

I will keep you posted with my plant’s progress, so check back with us in October, November and December.

I’m just as curious as you are, as this is my first time actually following the care instructions.

I saved Poinsettias before, but was not aware of all the necessary steps to make it bloom again.