Cucumbers have come on a great deal since the old days when they needed expert attention to get anything other than a miserable crop of bitter fruit. There are now all-female varieties that save you the effort of removing the male flowers that produce bitter fruit and there are also bitter-free varieties. Nevertheless, cucumbers are something of a specialist crop. If you feel like trying them, buy ready-grown plants and put them three to a growing bag or singly in pots. The outdoor or ridge varieties are easiest and for a novelty crop you could try to get hold of plants of ‘Crystal Apple‘, which, for some reason or other, produces cucumbers the size, shape and colour of a large lemon. ‘Sweet Success’ is an all-female plant that can be grown out of doors in a container and ‘Patio-Pik’ claims to take up no more room than a cabbage and endure neglect yet still produce more than thirty cucumbers per plant. I haven’t tried it myself but, even allowing for a bit of horticultural hyperbole, it sounds just the thing for the window box gardener.
Salad crops, which must be grown fast to be really succulent, are good subjects for a window box. Sow lettuce seed—make sure it is new season’s seed— ten or twelve to a bag in early April and keep the compost moist but not sopping wet. Thin out the young plants to six; with luck you will be able tohave a small salad from even these thinnings. As the remaining lettuces develop keep them well watered by trickling water around the plants, trying not to splash the leaves. Cut the lettuce with a sharp knife when hearted but still young and juicy. The first crop in a growing bag will not need feeding but the second crop, which you can sow as soon as the first is done but not later than the end of July, will need regular feeding.
Radishes will grow well even in a small window box, sown in late March along a 2 inch deep drill. As the roots develop you thin them out and if lucky you can use the thinnings in salads. Regular watering is essential to ensure juicy radishes but, all things considered, I feel better use than this can be made of the summer window box or an expensive growing bag.
All kinds of squash, courgettes (zucchini), marrows and even pumpkins can be grown in containers and bags. Courgettes (zucchini) are the best bet, cut while small so as to encourage more fruit to form. Plant two to a standard bag and choose bush rather than trailing varieties as the latter can be terrible wanderers. Plants carry both male and female flowers, the latter being recognizable by the tiny swelling courgette just behind the flower. Usually the first flowers to appear are male and as soon as you can see a female you must remove a male, strip the petals off and push thepollen-covered spike into that female flower. Eventually more female flowers will develop and insects will do the job of pollination for you. Regular watering and picking is all that should be required to keep the plants going until the first frosts, althoughan occasional feed will also help.
Marrows are grown the same way but plants are restricted to only two or three fruit, which must be left to develop and will also need feeding. For a monster marrow to show off to your friends don’t think it will be edible—you can thread a length of wool through a small hole made in the stem about an inch away from the fruit. Immerse the other end in a jar of sugar solution, one teaspoonful of sugar to a I pound jam jar; if you conceal this under leaves no-one will know that you are cheating.
Pumpkin can be grown the same way, one to a plant. The resulting fruit can be turned into pumpkin pie or cut and left in a corner of the kitchen in the hope that it will turn into a fairy coach. Mine hasn’t, yet.
Other marrow varieties include delightful scallop-shaped fruit called ‘Custard Yellow’ or ‘Patty Pan’. These taste exactly like courgettes (zucchini) but have the virtue of this novelty shape. In the open garden, where yield tends to be more important, some of these novelties may not be very successful. But in a confined space where yield will never be high it is worth growing them because they are so different from anything you can buy in the shops.
Seed raisers have been experimenting in the last year or two with vegetables that can be grown in hanging baskets. I have seen bush tomatoes, the ones that are not stopped or de-shooted but allowed to spread along the ground on straw, planted one to a basket and growing nicely. Yield, it has to be said, is not heavy and towards the end of the summer the yellowing of the lower leaves, which is normal, makes for a less than decorative appearance. However, for novelty value, and for an occasional picking of sweet homegrown tomatoes, you could certainly try a few plants in baskets. Make sure you buy bush tomato plants—’Sigmabush’ or ‘Primabel’ or, if you can find it, ‘Minibel’—and keep them well watered and fed.
Something else that you could do for novelty value rather than for heavy cropping is to grow runner beans in wine bottles. The bottoms must first be tapped out of the bottles using a hammer and a cold chisel. This is not as difficult as it sounds. Up-end the bottles—I usually ‘plant‘ them in a spare placein the garden pro tern—and fill tightly with good compost, tucking a couple of beans in, each an inch or so deep, as you go. Keep watered and when germination has taken place remove the bottles from wherever you have been supporting them and tie around their necks lengths of string that can beused to hang them from a convenient place. As the emerging shoots grow, thin to one per bottle. It will curl around the bottom of the bottle to grow upwards, as it ought. You can then encourage it around the sides of the bottle and up the strings from which it hangs. Watering and liquid feeding is done through the narrow top of the bottle and flowers and a few beans should be your reward. By no means the way to grow massive crops, but a novelty that might amuse the children.
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