📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): The “Milk Crate & Bag” Cucumber Hack
- 🛡️ Vole & Mole Protection: Growing cucumbers inside plastic crates (like milk crates or harvest crates) set directly on the greenhouse soil physically prevents burrowing rodents from eating the main root ball.
- 💧 Preventing Stem Rot: By planting in a raised crate and using inverted cut plastic bottles in the corners as deep-watering funnels, the crown/stem of the cucumber plant stays completely warm and dry. This prevents dreaded fungal collar rot.
- 🌡️ Cold Soil Insulation: For extra early plantings, grow bags are placed inside the crates with a piece of cardboard underneath as a false bottom. The cardboard insulates the roots from the freezing ground. Once the greenhouse soil warms up, the cardboard is slipped out, the bottom of the bag is cut open, and the roots grow down into the earth.
Aleksan9ra wrote:
Lyudmila, the grow bag should sit right on top of the garden bed, you don’t need to bury it in the dirt. You remove the insulating layer (cardboard/foam) underneath it after about 10-12 days, and then the roots will start growing down into the soil. If your topsoil is already warm enough, tomatoes can be planted without the insulation, but cucumbers and eggplants definitely still need it. But keep in mind, we are talking about super early spring planting here.
Lyudmila, I’m actually planning to do my early cucumbers in black grow bags (I just bought some!) and in plastic crates.
Right now, my plan is to line the bottom of the crates with separate pieces of cardboard so I can carefully slide them out later. I’ll line the inside with a cut-open black trash bag and start growing my cucumber seedlings right in these crates inside the bags. To save space indoors, I might cram two bags per crate and just shove some empty plastic bottles between them for stability so they don’t tip over. I think that’ll work perfectly. That is exactly how they will eventually move out to the greenhouse.
When it’s time to transplant them to their final spot in the greenhouse dirt, I’ll leave just one cucumber plant per crate. I’ll slice the bottom off the black bag along the perimeter, pull out the cardboard, and set the crate directly on the soil. Then I’ll just fill the crate up with compost and periodically add more mulch as it grows. I grew them in crates last year (though I used cut plastic jugs inside them back then). The crate is an absolute lifesaver against voles and rodents!
I also really love that the frame of the crate creates a very stable raised mound. I don’t water the mound itself at all—I only water the surrounding soil outside of it. For deep watering, I stick cut plastic bottles (neck down) into the four corners of the crate. The cucumber roots easily grow out through the bottom into the main bed, the critters don’t bother them, and the crown/stem zone stays totally warm and dry (no stem rot!).
Right now, I’m running a test: I planted an early cucumber directly into a store-bought bag of potting soil. I cut an ‘X’ in the plastic, popped the seedling in, added a cut bottle for watering (neck down), and dropped in a Glyocladin (Trichoderma) biofungicide tablet. The bag is sitting in a tray that’s about the size of a crate. The cucumber is stalling a bit—maybe it’s just focusing on growing roots, though I can see some top growth. But it’s going to be a real pain to transplant it later. We’ll see how it goes.
Natasha, it seems to me like you’ve made this incredibly complicated with a lot of unnecessary extra steps. Do you think you could cut some of those steps out? Wouldn’t it be way easier to just plant directly into the crate right from the start?
