Cucumbers in December

Here is the long-awaited first fruit below the flower on my water-baby cucumber. 

I hand-pollinated it this morning by taking the petals off one of the male flowers, and brushing the pollen against the inside of this flower.  Note that the female flower has a green bulge between the stem and the flower head and the male flower is attached with a very straight and very skinny stem as pictured below:

  This kind of cucumber plant normally produces quite a few male flowers before the first female one is formed, then it produces both kinds.  Assuming that I did this correctly, that green bulge at the base of the top flower will turn into a delicious Sumter cucumber, approaching six inches in length.  That is, if I can keep from picking it sooner.  

A local drug store had seed packets on sale ten for a dollar and although I had no actual intention of trying to grow a cucumber at the time, at that price I simply bought one of everything, having been bitten hard by the gardening bug several months earlier when we bought our first AeroGarden electronic indoor planter.   The AeroGarden was just what we needed because we winter in one state and summer in another, living in upstairs condos at either end.   Not only do we not have what under normal circumstances would be considered a full growing season, we don’t even have dirt!  Nor do we have space to store pots or soil or any of the other many things necessary for successful dirt gardening.  What is more, I don’t like dirt.  And I especially don’t like bugs.

After growing a few successful crops dirt-free and bug-free in the AeroGardens, however, I learned that it is possible to start seedlings indoors very quickly in the Aerogardens, then move the seedlings into clean, compact, soil-free containers where the roots are suspended in water and nourished by periodic appications of liquid plant food. 

Of course, had I realized from the outset that in order to get the cucumber plant to fruit indoors I would have to make like a honey bee and, yes, pollinate those pretty little yellow flowers, I probably would have screamed and run the other way.  But I was already in love with the idea of having a fruit-bearing houseplant with beautiful and also edible flowers.   When the first tendril appeared, I knew it would wrap itself around my heart, but when the first flower appeared I was doomed.