It’s Cucumber Time
Just-Picked Cucumbers Have One of the Freshest of All Garden Tastes
IT SEEMS FANATICAL FOR a backyard garden, I know, but I grow two 12-foot rows of cucumbers, with the vines directed up a trellis. Last summer, after too much early summer rain, my cucumber crop was a bust; this summer we’re back to abundance. We grow so many because they’re a summer treat (the ones we buy at other times aren’t nearly as good) and because we like to give them away, we like to pick them small, and our children visit and they like cucumbers beyond any normal standard. (When one son was little, he was asked whether he’d like cucumbers or ice cream for dessert, and he said “Cucumbers.” He did add, “But I’d like both.”) Compared with the cucumbers I grow or have bought from a farmer, supermarket ones have a more vegetal flavor that isn’t quite clean. Gardening is a way to have luxuries by way of labor rather than expense.