Bill and Margaret Barrier have a 25-inch cucumber they can’t eat. It’s too big.
Bill, 74, has been gardening his entire life. He grew up on a farm and is accustomed to having homegrown vegetables on the dinner table.
The couple have three small gardens and grow a wide assortment of produce, including tomatoes, corn, cucumbers, squash and peppers.
What they don’t eat, they give away, which makes Bill a popular guy in the Gold Hill area.
The long cucumber, Barrier said, is a hybrid burpless one. It makes the others that he has pulled from the vines look small, but this cucumber lost its taste when it got so big.
So Barrier is just going to hang it behind his house until it rots.
The others?
“They’re good,” Barrier says only half jokingly.
He’s proud of his garden and loves the vegetables it produces — even the weird ones.
He also gets the exercise he needs while tending his garden. There isn’t any secret to his success this growing season, Barrier said.
He uses a mixture of fertilizers that includes Miracle Gro every couple of weeks.
The rain certainly hasn’t hurt either, he said.
Contact Michael Bostian at 704-797-4280 or mbostian@salisburypost.com
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