Outdoor Tondo Barese

Here are a few recent pictures of a couple of my outdoor Tondo Barese carosello. As stated earlier, I have been growing some Tondo Barese in my greenhouse. I sent these pictures to my friend, Giuseppe who is writing a post about them at his blog.

It took a couple times of me putting out transplants to finally remember to harden the plants off. I probably wasted a month of growing time making this mistake. Don’t follow my example. Allow plants that have been protected at least a week of hardening off before transplanting. I have found that cucumbers and melons are especially sensitive to transplant shock. As stated earlier, my best results have been with pre-sprouting.

Once the soil warms up the plants grow very quickly. This year I added some powdered basalt to my soil to counteract how much nutrients my tomatoes took from my soil last year. I picked it up from LeBallister's Seed, which sells soil amendments to large vineyards and retail customers at wholesale prices. The results so far have been very good.

 I hope that the rest of your growing season is both fruitful and productive.

Last, but not least - if any of you are interested in purchasing seed of this variety, you can go to Cucumber Shop or if you would like to watch a very amateur video I made of the Tondo Barese, you may do so here.