This is our 3rd year with a vegetable garden, and each year we’ve added something new to see how it goes. This year we added a cucumber plant to the mix. Over the last few weeks, we’ve been watching some cucumbers grow, and grow, and grow. Tonight when Dave was about to water the garden, we noticed the ENORMOUS cucumber was getting more yellow! It’s been yellow for a while, we thought it would eventually turn green. We went ahead and picked it, and started looking online for information on yellow cucumbers.
There seem to be several possibilities as to why our cucumber turned yellow. The most obvious is that it over-ripened. Another possibility is too much water. We’re in a bit of a drought, but he’s been soaking the garden nightly, so it is possible. Apparently some kinds of cucumbers need less than others. It could be poor soil, but our other vegetables are doing really well. And it could be a virus, but that would likely affect the other plants also.
Most of what I noticed when looking up the yellow cucumbers is recipes. Tons and tons of recipes, some specifically designed for cucumbers that were on the vine longer than “normal” and turned yellow.
So, we ate a slice…
YUM!
A bit sweeter than what we’d buy at the store, but good. We’re going to make a fresh salad to use the rest of the cucumber in.
And, the rest of our cucumbers in the garden will be monitored a little more closely so we pick them when they’re big enough, but not so yellow.
Dave did also pick a smaller, green cucumber, and he tasted it, said it wasn’t even good. I am thinking that one wasn’t ripened enough.
And, the plants we got are Boston Pickling cucumbers, so they aren’t like the typical salad cucumbers, and that likely contributed to why we didn’t know to pick it sooner.
