Cucumbers

By Kim Willis These articles are copyrighted and may not be copied or used without the permission of the author.

Cucumbers are a great crop for a small garden because one plant yields a lot and because they can be trained to grow up a trellis so they take up vertical, not horizontal space.  You can use them fresh or turn them into pickles for storage.  There are some bush type cucumbers that can also be grown in a pot. 

Common, (monoecious), cucumbers have both male and female flowers on the same plant. They are the most productive types for growing outside in the home garden where you want a long season of harvest. There are two main types of these cucumbers.  One has white spines and is the variety best for fresh use. They are usually long and narrow.  The other type has black spines and is usually shorter and fatter.  This is the best type for pickles.  But either type can be used either way.  Catalogs will often label them as slicers or pickling cukes.

 

There are some odd cucumber varieties such as brown, white or reddish ones and some that form a round fruit.  Gherkins are not really a cucumber but a related species. Baby cukes are just cucumbers harvested when small.

There are special varieties of cukes that are better for greenhouse production.  Many of these are parthenocarpic, that is they produce fruit without being pollinated. They are seedless or nearly seedless but must be isolated from other types of cukes. They generally have long narrow fruits with thin skin and are used as slicing or fresh cukes.  The seed or the plants are more expensive than other cucumbers.

Gynoecious cucumbers are varieties that have been developed that have all or mostly female flowers. They usually produce most of their fruit at one time, which may be good if you want to make pickles. But they need to have a regular cucumber or two which have male flowers planted among them to get fruit.

Cucumbers are a vine crop. Vines can get 10 feet long in some cases and have white bumps along the stems.  The leaves are triangular.  The whole plant has a prickly, sticky feel. The flowers are yellow and are either male or female in the normal monoecious garden cucumber.  Male flowers don’t produce fruit.  Female flowers have a small cuke attached at the back.  Male flowers without the baby attached usually begin to bloom first, but in suitable weather female flowers will shortly follow.  Cucumbers are insect pollinated but you only need one plant to get cucumbers. 

Cucumber fruits can be bumpy or smooth on the outside depending on variety.  They are usually dark green, with paler striping on some when immature.  They turn yellow, white or brown when ripe.

Cucumbers are a warm weather crop and should be planted after all danger of frost has passed in your area.  They grow quickly from seed and can be planted directly in the ground where they are to grow.  Some gardeners will start seeds inside earlier or buy transplants to set out.  Small transplants are better than larger ones at quickly establishing themselves.

Plant cucumbers in full sun.  For best fruit production they require even, consistent amounts of water as a cucumber fruit is primarily water. You can fertilize with a garden fertilizer at planting, but it may not be necessary in good soil. Many people plant cucumbers in a mound of soil with 3-4 plants in a 2 feet diameter mound but planting them in rows is fine too.  Space plants about 12 inches apart. 

If you are going to use some kind of trellis for the cucumbers to climb put that in place when you plant them.  A piece of wire fence between two poles is a good trellis. The trellis can be at an angle or straight up and down.  You may have to help the young plants vining stems find a trellis in the beginning but after that they should not need to be tied up.

Cucumbers can also be allowed to sprawl on the ground.  This works best with mulch underneath the plants to keep the fruit clean.  Each plant will take up a good bit of room this way, at least 6 feet.

Harvest cucumbers when they are young and small for the best fresh, slicing cucumbers.  Pickling cucumbers can be allowed to get a little bigger. A little yellow on the bottom is ok.  Most cucumber fruits turn yellow when they are ripe, a few turn white.  You don’t want them to get to this stage.  They will have large seeds and the flavor is poor.  But do pick any yellow cucumbers you see and feed them to the chickens or put them in the compost pile.  If you leave them to finish ripening, it’s a signal to the plant to stop producing fruits.

The most common problem of cucumbers is powdery mildew.  In this fungal disease the leaves get grayish, fuzzy spots that turn into a coating.  Leaves then dry up and fall off. It’s most prevalent in warm, humid weather but can pop up at other times.  Plants stressed by lack of water but in humid conditions are often affected. Shaded leaves and older leaves show symptoms first. The plants may put out new leaves at the end of the vine and continue to set a few fruits, but they won’t produce well. 

Downy mildew is a worse problem because vines will rapidly die. It is more of a problem when the weather turns cool, wet and cloudy and later in the season. The leaves will get yellow angular spots on the top between leaf veins and fuzzy grayish brown to black spots on the underside, then the whole plant quickly dies. This fungal disease will also spread to squash, melons and pumpkins.

Fungal diseases can’t be cured, only prevented. They are often blown in on the wind. To prevent powdery and downy mildew plant resistant varieties and use a garden fungicide through the season as the label directs. Don’t water in the evening and don’t crowd plants. Home remedies of baking soda and milk are not effective at prevention and certainly not as a cure. Epsom salt does absolutely nothing and may harm plants further.

Cucumber beetles are a pest of cucumbers.  There are striped and spotted varieties. They are long beetles, usually yellow with black spots or stripes. The spotted cucumber beetle will feed on all kinds of plants, but the striped cucumber beetle usually sticks to cucumbers, melons and squash. 

Spotted cucumber beetles lay their eggs on the roots of grasses and corn and the larvae feed there. Only the adults eat the cucumber plant.  Striped cucumber beetles lay eggs at the base of cucumber plants and both adults and larvae feed on them.  Feeding by beetles stunts growth, they may eat flowers and reduce yield and the beetles can carry bacterial diseases.

Cucumber beetle control can be helped by mulching plants with straw, which encourages predator insects, or using reflective plastic mulch which repels them. Using a hand vac to suck up beetles can help. Don’t plant cucumbers in the same spot each year because the beetles can overwinter. Gardeners can also use garden insecticides according to label directions.

Cucumbers are rarely bothered by animal pests, unless you count chickens left to roam the garden.