How to grow Cucumbers..
Why grow cucumbers?? For starters they are delicious and soooo easy to grow. For the novice gardener they are the perfect starter crop. This year I just sewed seeds and now I have huge plants that are producing like crazy..simple ehh?? Just make sure you inspect your plants everyday.. Cucumbers can mature on the vine in a matter of days, sometimes overnite.. Yesterday I found one the size of a mallott...scary.. I must have missed that one hiding under the leaves. Once they get so big the fruit becomes bitter so pick them at a nice 6-7 inch size..yummm! Sometimes I wonder if i set up a tent and watched a cucumber grow I could actually see it increase in size...Has anyone actually done that?? They grow like magic while we aren't looking.. Cool!! Heres a little article on Cucumber How to from Bonnie Plants...A tropical vegetable, cucumbers thrive when the weather is hot and water is plentiful. Plants are so frost-tender that they shouldn’t be set into the garden until soil temperatures are reliably in the 70-degree range (no less than 2 weeks after the last frost date).
Cucumber plants grow in two forms: vining and bush. Vines scramble along the ground or clamber up trellises, while bush types, such as Burpless Bush Hybrid, form a more compact plant. Generally, vining cucumbers yield more fruit throughout the growing season. Bush selections are especially suited to containers and small gardens. You can increase the season’s yield of bush varieties by planting several crops in succession 2 weeks apart.
Whether you want a cucumber for slicing or pickling, there’s a variety to suit your taste. Lemon cucumber offers smaller fruits perfect for a single serving, while Boston Pickling boasts classic heirloom taste. The long Armenian cucumber is a specialty ethnic cucumber prized for taste and the fact that a single cucumber yields so many slices.
Soil, Planting, and Care
Set cucumber plants at the base of your trellis and mulch after planting unless the soil could use a little more warming.
In areas where spring is long and cool, you can warm the soil 3 to 4 degrees by covering the hill or row with black plastic.If you do not plant in black plastic, then mulch with pine straw, wheat straw, chopped leaves, or your favorite organic mulch shortly after planting. If the weather is unseasonably cool, you can wait a while to mulch until the ground is warmed by the sun. Mulch is especially important to keep the fruit clean for bush types and vines not growing on a trellis. Straw mulch is also thought to be uncomfortable for slugs and creates an uneasy footing for cucumber beetles, helping to keep them at bay.
If you can, trellis your vines. This keeps the fruit clean and saves space. A 12- to 18-inch diameter cage made from 4- or 5-foot welded wire fencing or hog wire will support 2 or 3 vines. Wire is easy for the tendrils of climbing cucumbers to grab as the plant grows.
Cucumbers grow fast and don’t demand a lot of care. Just keep the soil consistently moist with an inch of water per week (more if temperatures sizzle and rain is scarce). Inadequate or inconsistent moisture causes oddly shaped or poor-tasting fruit. If possible, water your cucumbers with a soaker hose or drip irrigation to keep the foliage dry. This helps prevent leaf diseases that can ruin the plant.
You can fertilize with a liquid food, such as Bonnie Herb & Vegetable Plant Food, every 2 weeks, applying it directly to soil around plant stems. Or you can use a granular, slow-release fertilizer worked into the soil when you plant or sprinkled around the plants later.
Troubleshooting
If vines bloom but don’t fruit, something is probably interfering with pollination. First, make sure that you see both male and female blooms. Male blooms usually appear first and then drop off, so don’t be alarmed if this happens. Within a week or two, female flowers will also appear; each one has a small cucumber-shaped swelling at the base that will become a cucumber.Several pests bother cucumbers. Squash bugs may attack seedlings. Slugs like ripening fruit. Aphids can colonize leaves and buds. Straw mulch helps keep slugs at bay, as can trellising vines to get the fruit off the ground. Vines are also bothered by cucumber beetles, which chew holes in leaves and flowers and scar stems and fruits, but worse than that, they spread a disease that causes the plants to wilt and die. Powdery mildew is a disease that leaves white, mildew-like patches on the leaves. Apply fungicides at the first sign of its presence. To minimize disease spread, avoid harvesting or handling vines when leaves are wet.
Harvest and Storage
You can pick cucumbers whenever they’re big enough to use. Check vines daily as the fruit starts to appear because they enlarge quickly. Vines produce more fruit the more you harvest. To remove the fruit, use a knife or clippers, cutting the stem above the fruit. Pulling them may damage the vine. Don’t let the cucumbers get oversized or they will be bitter, and will also keep the vine from producing more. Yellowing at the bottom (blossom end) of a cucumber signals overripeness; remove the fruit immediately. Harvest lemon cucumbers just before they begin turning yellow. Although they are called lemon cucumber because the little oblong or round fruits turn yellow and look like a lemon, by the time the fruit turns yellow it may be a little too seedy for most tastes.You can keep harvested cucumbers in the refrigerator for 7 to 10 days, but use them as soon as possible after picking for best flaor. If you don’t eat a slicing cucumber all at once, cover the unused portion in plastic wrap to prevent dehydration in the refrigerator. In fact, it’s a good idea to wrap your whole cucumbers in plastic or store them in a zipper bag in the fridge to keep them crisp.
Yummy Cucumber Salad Recipe
Prep time
Total time
Author: Natasha of NatashasKitchen.com
Skill Level: Easy
Cost To Make: Varies by season
Serving: 6
Ingredients
- 4-6 medium (2 lbs) tomatoes
- 4-5 small (1 lb) cucumbers, or 1 english cucumber)
- 1 small onion, thinly sliced (~1/4 lb)
- 2 Tbsp Sunflower or Extra virgin olive oil
- 1 Tbsp distilled white vinegar
- 1 tsp fine sea salt, or ¾ tsp table salt
- ¼ tsp Pepper to taste
- 2 Tbsp Green onion for garnish (optional)
Instructions
- Slice tomatoes and cucumbers and place them in a large bowl. Thinly slice onion and add them to the salad bowl.
- In a small ramekin, stir together 2 Tbsp sunflower oil, 1 Tbsp vinegar, 1 tsp fine sea salt and ¼ tsp pepper.
- Just before serving, drizzle your salad with dressing and add more salt to taste if desired. Don't add the dressing early or the tomatoes will be too juicy.
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