My mom had always been an avid gardener. I have fond memories of tagging along with her to the community garden when I was a kid. We’d always go after dinner when it was cooler. There was a plot of land leased to the elementary school that I attended. Families were allowed to use it for a community garden and she had her own plot where she’d grow veggies like lettuce, corn, and cucumber. I think this is where my love of gardening came from. The quiet evenings spent toiling the ground, watering plants, and watching them grow. You have a seed; give it soil, sun, and water and it grows into something. Almost like magic.
For my mother, gardening was actually a required skill. She learned to live off the land having been born and raised in a developing country like Laos. Gardening was crucial for survival for the majority of her life until she immigrated to the United States in the late 1980s. During the summers here, she especially loved growing Hmong cucumbers, lovingly known as dib Hmoob, and also referred to as Hmong red cucumbers.
“This cucumber hails from Muang Xay, a city in northern Laos. In Laos, the Hmong people prized this cucumber for its complex flavors (very sweet with a hint of sourness) and its desirable consistency (fibrous and fleshy). When in season, this cucumber was a staple at every meal. Upon immigrating to the United States and under the war torn conditions they fled, Hmong people did not bring Muang Xay cucumbers with them and many yearned to taste that sweet and refreshing vegetable again.
Due to economic barriers, it was not until the late 1990s that many Hmong Americans were able to afford travel costs to visit Laos. This time, when they returned to the United States, they brought back with them the cherished cucumber seeds with hopes to plant them in the U.S. It was in this way that the Muang Xay [or Hmong] cucumber was reintroduced to Hmong Americans. In the U.S., the seeds continue to be saved and shared among Hmong farmers to preserve the vegetable’s place in our culture.”1
Sadly, my mother passed away in the summer of 2023. While my sisters and I were cleaning out her belongings shortly after her passing, I came across a quart sized Ziploc bag with a label scrawled in her handwriting, “Hmoob dib noob.” She’d harvested the seeds over the years from her personal garden in Coon Rapids, Minnesota so that she could keep growing them annually.
Hmong cucumbers are hard to find in your generic American grocery stores. You’d have to venture to marketplaces in Fresno, Sacramento, or St. Paul where there’s a large population of Hmong people in order to find these cucumbers.
Below are pictures of her garden in Zone 5A during the summer of 2022, and again in the summer of 2023. Summer 2023 was the last time she’d ever get the chance to grow these cucumbers, and as you can see, the plant wasn’t thriving as much. Her health had deteriorated rapidly at that point and she was too weak to garden.
To keep my mother’s spirit alive, I’m not only growing her seeds myself, I’ve decided to sell them on my Etsy shop as well: everchicstudio21.
Below, you can see the Hmong cucumber seeds I planted this year (I skipped 2024 since my hands were full with raising my son). The plant on the left was transplanted to my terraced garden. I even had a trellis for the vines to climb and all, but my husband accidentally killed the plant when he was trimming a tree nearby. A branch fell onto the plant, crushing the main stem and ultimately killing it. I was not a happy camper.
The plant on the right is my last, futile attempt to try to grow some Hmong cucumbers this year. However, since I planted these late and the weather has gotten colder, sadly, I don’t think I’m getting any Hmong cucumbers this year.
Thanks for reading my post about my mother. It means a lot that you made it to the end.
♥️,
The Babbling Bee