If you have struggled to grow tomatoes successfully, maybe it's time to give cucumbers a try. They are much easier to grow than tomatoes. Just add some organic matter to the soil and mulch around the base of the plant. Cucumbers benefit from support, so install a trellis for the vines to climb. That's it. The saying, "cool as a cucumber" refers to the fact that it's about 20 degrees cooler on the inside of a cucumber. And, cucumbers contain loads of nutrients like magnesium, vitamin C, and potassium.  Cucumbers are 96 percent cool water. The phytochemcials in cucumbers kill the bacteria that causes bad breath. Just press a slice of cucumber to the roof of your mouth with your tongue and in 30 seconds, you'll have better-smelling breath.    Brevities #OTD   Today is the birthday of the first collector and cataloguer of Canadian plant specimens, Naturalist Michel Sarrazin, who was born on this day in 1659.   In France, Sarrazin was a trained to be a surgeon. By the age of 25, he was appointed to help the troops headed to colonize Canada. When he arrived in Canada he tended to both the troops and civilians in Québec and Montreal. Helping sick people was dangerous work. In his early thirties Sarrazin himself became ill and in short order he returned to France to receive more training. He spent three years in France - obtaining his doctorate of medicine and finding himself spending more and more time at the Botanical Garden in Paris. It wasn't long before he met the nobleman and botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort. Tournefort was an excellent teacher. He was the first botanist to develop the idea of creating a genus for plants. Later, Sarrazin would report that it was Tournefort  who "stimulated [his] lifelong interest in collecting and classifying [plants]".   Rested, educated, and passionate about horticulture, Sarrazin returned to Canada and he kept in touch with Tournefort through correspondence. He would send back various specimens of North American plants. Tournefort, in turn, would share Sarrazin's discoveries with the Royal Academy of Science back in France.    Sarrazin's most noted discover was Sarracenia purpurea, the pitcher plant - which Linneaus would name in his honor. The pitcher plant grew in wetlands, bogs and marshes around Québec. From a medicinal standpoint, the pitcher plant was discovered to be an effective against smallpox. Ever the doctor, Sarrazin had studied the powerful pitcher plant. Incredibly, it was Michel Sarrazin who first suspected that the plant actually caught insects and ate them. When he shared his thoughts in writing, the academic community rejected his theory. Nearly 200 years later, Charles Darwin would validate Sarrazin's hypothesis in his work called Insectivorous Plants.   There's a fascinating side-note in the Sarrazin biography; Sarrazin was the first doctor to perform a mastectomy in North America. His patient was a 38-year-old nun and her prognosis was so grim that Sarrazin was certain she would die without the surgery. Sarrazin acted quickly, the nun recovered, and lived a full life until the age of 77.         #OTD Today in 1857, Harvard botanist Asa Gray received a confidential letter from Charles Darwin.   In the letter, Darwin wrote:   "I will enclose the briefest abstract of my notions on the means by which nature makes her species....I ask you not to mention my doctrine."   Two years later, Darwin revealed his concept of natural selection in his book, "On the Origin of Species.       #OTD  Today is the birthday of the botanist Katherine Warington who was born on this day in 1897.   Warington was a twin in a family with five girls.    After college, Warington ended up working with an entomologist who was researching the black fly. The point of the research was to make beans taste bad to the fly. Researchers took turns applying various elements to the beans and in the process, Warington discovered that Boron was essential to plant growth. Two years later, Warington p