Odd cucumber growth

I'm thinking maybe some of my cucumbers are growing oddly due to maybe too much heat or not enough water? The cucumber on the left is pretty normal for what I'm growing, but I pulled a few that seem to grow very fat and short, and several of them even yellow. I can't remember if they're bitter - probably are - going to eat one today to see - but it's odd that different vines are growing differently. Any ideas? Let me know.


Here's some other photos of note from today (click images for bigger pictures)

The larger Romas are starting to turn red in a more consistent way. The first few weren't the best tomatoes. These seem to be ripening more evenly.


And here's a little surprise left from last year. All of these plants just came up from seed left over from last year that had just dropped to the ground. They're a smaller variety of Roma - bigger than a cherry tomato, but smaller than the larger Romas in the picture above. I really like these tomatoes.


... and my redneck efforts to put some twine around them to keep them from falling all over the place - yes that's the front porch - they grew awesomely there last year though. there's probably 5 or 6 plants in total growing there in the cluster.


And finally, here's a picture of the progression in vertical gardening. The cucumbers continue to take over. (click for bigger image)

More from the lazy gardener

I figure my 18 square feet of garden in the back yard is progressing pretty well. I've decided to see what happens if I fix it up for the cucumbers to grow vertically by stringing up some line similar to what I've done for the tomatoes. Those that know me can appreciate my enduring laziness - especially my reluctance to bend over unless I really have to - so I consider this laziness as the root cause of innovation in this case. Gardens above the ground can only be a good thing.

My wife went and got some more posts from Lowes and from there we'll just see what happens. The cucumbers might take over, but I figure I'll have more tomatoes than can possibly be eaten, so I'm just curious.

Here's some pics with the "trellis" type setup.




Also - most of my tomatoes are still green, but I do have the first red one of the year that I snuck a shot of, along with pics of some of the cucumbers which are close to being ready to be eaten.





Most of the tomatoes are still like this though: