The Martina Franca in the Raised Garden

Even though things don’t work out the way that we had planned, as we are open to the possibilities, we are often able to see our problems work out. One example of a problem working out for me was in growing the Martina Franca in the Raised Bed Garden. This was definitely not my first choice of places to grow. However, I was told that one of my cubic yard gardening bins needed to be moved on short notice. This made it so that my Martina Franca no longer had a place to grow. At the same time, I kept having major damage to my English cucumber variety at the raised garden. With the onslaught of pillbugs destroying my seedlings, and my dwindling supply of English cucumber seeds, I found that there would be ample space in the raised bed garden for the Martina Franca.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to the BioDiverso Puglia website, I knew about the Martina Franca for about a decade before I had the opportunity to grow the variety. I actually had a picture of the variety up on my wall for years, hoping that I would one day be able to grow it. I don’t know why opportunities happen, but when they do, I am grateful for them. The opportunity to recently acquire the Martina Franca from an Italian grower was a cherished moment for me. I continue to try to reach out to the gentleman who shared this variety with me to thank him for all that he shared with us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Martina Franca is a very vigorous variety for me. It grew extraordinarily well and quickly set a host of fruit near the base of the plant. The fruit is a beautiful color and texture and the flavor at picking stage makes it one of the best fruits that I have tried in a while. It continues to amaze me how many of the extremely rare caroselli (plural for carosello) produce very high quality fruit. It is a shame that the world is missing out on this gem of a cucumber.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When it finally came time to harvest the cucumbers, I noticed that the flowers looked like perfect hermaphrodite flowers and some of the fruit had low seed count or a high percentage of flat nonviable seed. This trait reminded me the Tondo di Galatina, which has parthenocarpic traits that can make it difficult to set seed. I decided to try growing the Martina Franca again soon, in order to find out if my observations about seed set may, in any way, be related to parthenocarpy in the variety.

English Telegraph Experiment – One More!

Everyone, including myself, will inevitably makes some mistakes. The mistake that I happened to make with my recent English Telegraph experiment was that I left seed of one seed supplier out. The seed supplier in question was Stokes Seed, from Canada. Unfortunately, Stokes seed is unwilling to sell to anyone outside of Canada, so I had to work with some Canadian friends of mine to acquire the variety.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the greenhouse was full, I started a few more seeds in some soil blocks and transplanted them into a friend’s plot that I refer to as “the fertile garden”. The plants did alright, but struggled for most of the season due to overhead watering.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I was finally able to harvest the mature fruit, they were seedless. It looks like finding an English Telegraph cucumber variety that will work for me will take quite a while.

English Telegraph Cucumber Experiment

One extremely popular cucumber that is very difficult to find is called the English Telegraph or sometimes also called the “Telegraph Improved”. Some of the drawbacks of this variety as a grower include the fact that it does not care much for hot weather and is extremely parthenocarpic. Because the female flowers set fruit without pollination, this makes the English Telegraph very difficult for saving seed. When I say difficult, I mean that some fruit will go from blossom to maturity without the flower opening up. This makes pollination practically impossible. Even with those flowers that do blossom, 20 seeds per fruit is an extremely high count and average counts for this variety average about 5 seeds per fruit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With such an abysmal outlook on the harvest, why would anyone want to try saving seeds of this variety? Because it can be grown in a greenhouse, has nice long cucumbers and, once established, is generally easy to care for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over time I have had difficulty sourcing seed for this variety, so I decided to try growing some seed for myself. In my greenhouse, I began by trying to grow some seed from three different sources including the GRIN government repository, Some from Seed Savers Exchange and few leftover seeds from the old Sustainable Seed Company.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The GRIN repository variety did alright, but over time it became very apparent that the variety was not true-to-type. The cucumbers did grow, but they were a bit warty and short – nothing like the regular English Telegraph. However, they were parthenocarpic – producing fruit without pollination. After a little while, I tossed the plants. This variety failed the true-to-type requirement of my experiment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Old Sustainable Seed Company seed produced great looking straight cucumbers that – more often than not – looked just like the English Telegraph cucumber should. However, the problem was that once harvested the fruit had no seed in them. To add insult to injury, I had absolutely no seed left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, the Seed Savers Exchange English Telegraph was true-to-type, a little curved, slightly bitter and produced some seed – but none was viable. At least with the Seed Savers variety, I had a jumping off point for future grow-outs. Finally, I have the opportunity to try growing more English Telegraph cucumbers in the future.