1) There are a few varieties of yellow and white cucumbers available that are never green -- they're ripe when they're yellow or white.
2)With most cukes, though, they're ripe when they're green... but if they stay on the vine too long, they turn yellow and hard and bitter. (Kinda like some people...)
3) Sometimes the first few cukes on the vine don't mature properly -- they never size up properly, and instead of getting any bigger they just go to that yellow/hard/bitter stage. (Again, kinda like some people.)
Offhand, that's all I can think of, hope that helps...
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I have a few tomatoes, but they're all still small and green. Not sure if they just really need fertilizer, or if I'm doing something else wrong. The cukes are growing like crazy, but only blossoms so far. Quite a few chile peppers, but none ripe enough to pick yet. One bell pepper has turned almost completely orange and I'll probably pick it in another day or two, but it looks kinda sad and its plant is pretty wilted, I'm not sure why.
I saw my first Japanese beetle last week. *scowls menacingly* I took a moment to admire his gorgeous bronze color before smashing him into oblivion. I haven't seen anymore, so hopefully he didn't get a chance to tell his friends before I caught him.
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Cuke blossoms -- with cukes (and also with zukes) the first flowers are male -- the plant puts out several male flowers before it puts out female flowers, the theory being that this way it'll make sure that there's enough male flowers around to pollinate the female flowers when they open... usually with cukes the pattern is to just see flowers for a while, then one day suddenly there's lots of cukes out there...
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I have now harvested one tomato and one Aji Cristal chile from my garden. Yummy! And two more tomatoes look to be ripening, and some tiny little cucumbers are forming.
I watered yesterday, because everything was looking so wilted and sad and the forecast only gives a 30-40% chance of rain anytime soon. By the time I finished the last square, the plants in the first few squares I'd watered were looking significantly better. It seemed to me that the leaves at the top of the plant were freshening before the leaves at the bottom; is that actually how it happens, or was I just imagining things?
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