Setanta wrote: ↑Thu Dec 29, 2022 6:10 pm
Gonna try grow cucumber and pumpkins (complete failure last year,dunno if we have the weather here for it),on top of the usual stuff
Pumpkins are easy to grow and well suited to Irish weather. There are a few key things though when growing them
1. Frost. Make sure ya transplant them outside after the frost risk has subsided. A hard frost will burn the leaves and kill them.
2. Pollination, the male and female flowers open up during the summer early in the morning, when the sun starts to rise. And close again around 10am. That's the time window pumpkins have for pollination. Most of the bees are still asleep at this stage. Worth getting up round 7am and hand pollinating them, get a fresh male flower, remove the large petal around it and look for the female flowers and rub the male flower against the stigma of the female flower. One male flower will pollinate 3 or 4 female flowers which develop the pumpkins.
Only pests they have is slugs, at the early stages of growth and later in the year they get mildew on the leaves, but is not a problem as the fruit will be at an advanced stage of development.
I put in two acres of them but the stupid lockdowns came in that year which meant all the customers I had for them couldn't open their pumpkin picking patches. So was a bit of a disaster but I was sorry I didn't do them the year gone as the rain fell at the correct times during the year for them and I had suppliers ringing me looking to see if I had them on the year just gone.
Cucumbers have been grown under glass in Ireland for decades. They don't do well in our climate outdoors and are prone to viruses but wouldn't stop me trying them again if you really want your own cucumbers.