Aug 16, 2010 By Christine Haines 2 min read

DAISYTOWN – Karen Krilosky loves to garden and has planted a vegetable garden for years, planting seeds and reaping what she planted. In spring, Krilosky bought a pack of bush cucumber seeds planning to pickle her harvest. The pack cost less than $2, just ordinary seeds, expected to grow a plant less than three feet in diameter. And then they started to grow. And grow. And grow.

“They just took off. They’re halfway down my yard,” Krilosky said of the bushy, six-foot-long plants. “They’re really bushy and they’re really long.”

The second clue that they weren’t normal picklers was the cucumbers themselves.

Forget oblong and green like the one’s on the package. Krilosky’s cukes are round and lemon yellow, with melon-like markings on the outside.

A little computer research showed that they might be dosakai cucumbers, generally found in Asia and India, but further research showed that the dosakai should have reddish seeds and her cucumber seeds look like regular cucumber seeds, apparently what led to the mix up at the packaging company to start with.

The plants are apparently lemon cucumbers, often sold as heirloom seeds for about twice the price Krilosky paid. The lemon cucumbers are said to be an excellent pickling cucumber and a good producer.

“I love them, and they’re easier to digest,” Krilosky said. “They’re going to be popular next year. I gave a lot of them away for seeds.”