These Root Vegetables Are The Perfect Companions To Grow With Cucumbers

When you grow cucumbers in your garden for the first time, you'll be amazed at how wonderful they taste. Their exquisite flavor is infinitely more intense than any you can buy from the store. Of course, before you get started, you'll want to know what you can plant them with to make the best use of your garden space. The absolute perfect companions to grow with cucumbers are root vegetables such as carrots, radishes, and beets.

There's a good reason why you're much better off growing cucumbers vertically on some kind of trellis or other support, as it keeps them off the ground and makes them easier to harvest. On the other hand, root crops take up minimal space above the ground because a lot of their growth happens beneath the soil line. This means there'll be no competition for space as your crops continue to grow to their full potential. You'll also find that all of these plants like plenty of moisture and sunshine, and your cucumbers will tell you when it's time to water. Their leaves tend to droop a little when the soil is dry, especially during the heat of the day, which means you can quickly turn on your watering system or give them a good soaking with the hose to replenish the soil's moisture. To make irrigating your garden bed even easier, you might want to make a budget-friendly DIY home garden watering system.

Root vegetables that have long taproots, like carrots, can effectively help to break up and aerate the soil. This allows the cucumber roots easier access to nutrients, which they need to produce those delectable fruits. You can utilize this space even more by planting fast-growing radishes among or beside your young carrot seedlings because these will be ready to harvest long before the carrots have had time to fill out. It's also said that radishes deter the cucumber beetles that might just protect your cukes from these pests. 

Cucumbers have a high demand for adequate potassium, as well as plenty of magnesium and calcium for optimum growth.  Beets and carrots also need a good dose of potassium, so growing these with your cukes will require you to adjust your fertilizer applications to meet this demand. With this type of companion planting, you'll be assured of a constant harvest from just one small garden bed. Your first harvest will be the radishes, which only take around three to five weeks before they're ready to pull. Next, you should be able to start picking some cucumbers in around seven to ten weeks, depending on the variety you're growing. Remember to follow some helpful tips on how and when to harvest these. Beets and carrots take a little longer, with carrots being ready in around 65 to 75 days, and beets in about 50 to 100 days.