cucumbers!
this year i decided to grow cukes although i seldom eat many of them but mark's frequent references to loaches loving them got me to try store bought ones and indeed after a few offerings it seemed to be one of the favorites of the clowns specifically.
thus i ordered european and pickling cuke seeds this spring. planted them and voila! organically grown cukes that last up to 24 hrs in the tank without turning to mush (whatever is left that is)....
it is so delightful to watch the clowns immediately attack the cukes from both ends....i cut them in half usually and also cut off the rounded end...within a minute, a tank appearing to be empty of loaches produces all five who vie for a place at the cuke table. later, whenever i walk into the room where their tank is, i can see them working away, bodies half invisible inside the cuke.
i've gotten to the point of leaving the skin on as i know there are no harmful chemicals on them and this also seems to help reduce the degradation and left over cleanup. i can place one a day in their tank and they never seem to tire of them although truthfully i don't usually do this too many days in a row as there becomes a large amount of seeds that collect here and there in the tank.
i do keep the tank with low nitrates so that may keep the cukes fresh in there longer and also coming directly from my garden or fridge they are much fresher than store bought which i tend to remove after several hours as they seem to degrade much more quickly.
anyway a big thank you to mark for planting the idea of cukes as food. i do offer them differently than he however. since i have plenty of flat slate and other rock pieces i weight the cuke down horizsontally so each end is exposed.
the joy of homegrown
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the joy of homegrown
slogan for the day: things may not be what they seem.
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Graeme Robson
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angelfish83
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lol...now we embark on an entirely different subject! oh perhaps there was a *slight* allusion in my post. : )angelfish83 wrote:I grew some "home grown" stuff in my backyard a couple years ago... it was really good...
I tried again last year but some punks jumped my fence and took my 'cucumbers' right before I was going to 'eat' them...
slogan for the day: things may not be what they seem.
i have been wondering about zucchini...i will try with my own homegrown zuchs....thanks for the tip! you really should start a garden shari! : )shari2 wrote:gave the clowns some zuchini the other day. What a frenzy! They decimated the whole thing. Nothing left but a few seeds. Though it wasn't 'home grown'...
slogan for the day: things may not be what they seem.
Used to be really 'into' it barbara, back when we had an old farmhouse on 1.25 acres next to a farmer. (yes, there are still farms in NJ!) grew all kinds of stuff--even luffa. 
Melons, beans, potatoes, alot of other stuff I can't recall right now. I canned tomatoes, made pickles, jelly, and had LOTS of corn and strawberies from the farmer next door.
Then we moved. Bigger house was needed. 6 kids with #7 on the way in a 2br, 200+year old house...wasn't working. Where we are now is a much larger house, but much smaller property with very little area that gets enough sun. Tried a garden in the sunniest spot but it was a dismal failure after alot of work. So now, we do volunteer cherry tomatoes, and herbs along with the occasional volunteer pumpkin vine.
did you know that if you scratch a green pumpkin, just enough to get it to sweat, that you will then have a pumpkin with whatever you scratch scarred into the orange rind? We used to write kids names on them so that there would be no arguing over whose was whose.
Melons, beans, potatoes, alot of other stuff I can't recall right now. I canned tomatoes, made pickles, jelly, and had LOTS of corn and strawberies from the farmer next door.
Then we moved. Bigger house was needed. 6 kids with #7 on the way in a 2br, 200+year old house...wasn't working. Where we are now is a much larger house, but much smaller property with very little area that gets enough sun. Tried a garden in the sunniest spot but it was a dismal failure after alot of work. So now, we do volunteer cherry tomatoes, and herbs along with the occasional volunteer pumpkin vine.
did you know that if you scratch a green pumpkin, just enough to get it to sweat, that you will then have a pumpkin with whatever you scratch scarred into the orange rind? We used to write kids names on them so that there would be no arguing over whose was whose.
i've seen scarified pumpkins but never knew the timing of that.
it seems cukes and zuchs do their own thing without much attention. other crops, yes, need some help along the way but these two...i just throw some used aquarium water on them and watch 'em grow.
actually a big garden is a lot of work. too much work in some ways but still it is nice to know how the food we eat is grown...although i have no control over what comes to it by way of the air. i suppose it's even worse in nj.
gotta get back to work now.
it seems cukes and zuchs do their own thing without much attention. other crops, yes, need some help along the way but these two...i just throw some used aquarium water on them and watch 'em grow.
actually a big garden is a lot of work. too much work in some ways but still it is nice to know how the food we eat is grown...although i have no control over what comes to it by way of the air. i suppose it's even worse in nj.
gotta get back to work now.
slogan for the day: things may not be what they seem.
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angelfish83
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