Cucumbers as part of a Three-Fold Ground Cover Layer for Grocery Row Gardens

In 2023 we planted our landrace-in-progress pickling cucumber seeds along with some fresh store-bought seeds, mixing them all together so they would cross and give us a wider genetic pool.

Some results:

We had piles of cucumbers, ultimately harvesting 163lbs of them before letting the rest go to seed so we could save tons for the next year.

Instead of growing them on trellises like Normal Human Gardeners(TM), we used them as a ground cover in the Grocery Row Gardens.

I can’t tell you how much I love Grocery Row Gardening. It’s the perfect combination of annuals, perennials, high food production, anarchy and order.

I get all sappy about it.

I feel with my heart that Grocery Row Gardening is my true love.

But we were talking about cucumbers, weren’t we?

Here are the first cucumbers, coming up:

Note the chicken bones in the rough compost we planted them in. Yes, you can compost meat, and it’s great for the garden. We’ve been composting many, many piles of chicken bones and scraps from a local source. The gardens have bones all over them now. The’ll break down over time and feed the soil, as God designed it.

Most of the chicken has been going into the compost, but some of it has been charred for our terra preta experiments.

Either way, it goes in the garden and feeds our plants.

We’ve planted about twenty hills of cucumbers and another twenty hills of watermelons around the Grocery Row Gardens so far. Our three-part ground cover layer last year grew in succession.

First, the cucumbers ran around and produced us a crop.

They were then followed by watermelons, which overtook the cucumbers as they died out and became the dominant ground cover.

As they finished up and late summer set in, sweet potatoes took over as the main ground cover.

The three ground covers gave us the following yields:

Cucumbers: 163 lbs

Watermelons: 760 lbs

Sweet Potatoes: 232 lbs

That is 1,155lbs of food from just the ground cover layer.

And it all took very little effort, as they were pretty much planted and then ignored. If you have enough compost and/or manure in the soil and they get a little water to start running, you’ll usually get something. At least when they’re planted in Grocery Rows. I’ve had worse luck growing these crops conventionally.

The landrace genetics on the cucumbers and melons help as well. They seem more vigorous than the non-mixed varieties we’ve grown in the past.

We’ve already planted watermelons and sweet potatoes along with our cucumbers. We’ll see if we get similar results to last year. I have a great feeling about it.

Learn more about Grocery Row Gardening in my little book.

I think you’ll enjoy how well it works – like this fellow!