cucumber types cucumbers growing cucumbers

Growing Cucumbers

1 comment Dec 13, 2024by David Schulze

There is nothing like the crunch of a fresh cucumber whether it is in a salad, eaten off the vine or made into a pickle. They are great.

This article is about growing cucumbers based on David’s experience.

Growing cucumbers is best done on a trellis but just letting them sprawl out on the ground will also work. Growing on a trellis allows you to work with them easier and helps keep some ground bugs off of them.

Cucumbers can grow when the temperature gets up into the 90°s but they hate cool weather down to 55° Fahrenheit or so.

Some cucumbers are self-pollinating which means they can be grown in a greenhouse.

There are three types:

1. Gherkin which are about 1 to 2 inches long.

2. Pickling can grow up to 6 inches long.

3. Slicing which can grow up to 12 to 16 inches long.

These fall into the following categories:

Monoecious: The most common type of cucumber, monoecious varieties have both male and female flowers on the same plant. The first 10 to 20 flowers are usually male, followed by female flowers in a ratio of about 10 male to 1 female. These varieties produce fruit over a longer period of time.

These cucumbers will grow both female and male flowers. Such cucumber plants do not need another cultivar cucumber plant for pollination. They require bees, other insects, or wind, however, to spread their pollen from their male flowers to their female flowers.

These would be the type to grow in a greenhouse with a fan to spread the pollen.

Gynoecious: These varieties produce almost exclusively female flowers, and in high concentrations. They are typically earlier and higher yielding than monoecious varieties. Some Gynoecious varieties require pollination, while others do not.

These cultivars produce higher yields of cucumbers than monoecious cultivars. Some of these cultivars have a ratio of about 70 percent female flowers to 30 percent male flowers. Some other cucumber cultivars have no male flowers, and they require pollination from cultivars that produce male flowers.

Packets of all-female flower cultivars often contain dyed male seeds for their simple identification, or the male seeds are in a separate packet. For best results, mix Gynoecious cultivars with Monoecious cultivars at a ratio of about 9 to 1.

Parthenocarpic: These varieties do not need to be pollinated to produce fruit. However, if pollinated, they will produce bitter fruit, so the male flowers need to be removed. Read this article from Aker to find out more about growing these types of cucumbers.

I have been growing cucumbers for many years and never realized there were these three types until I prepared this article. It may be the reason I have not had as much success with cucumbers as I should have.

Knowing the type of cucumber we are growing is very important to the success of growing cucumbers.

I have read articles about people’s cucumbers having a bitter taste. Maybe a Monoecious was planted with the Parthenocarpic which will produce a bitter tasting cucumber.

If your cucumber does not produce enough male flowers you can try hand pollinating. To find out how to hand pollinate read this article.

Male flowers have slender stems and grow in clusters, while female flowers have a swollen ovary at the base and grow individually.

The first picture is a female flower. The second picture is a male flower.

When pollination is not adequate the cucumber will be deformed as pictured below. This is just one way it will be deformed. There are several deformities that can occur with improper pollination.

Planting:

Now that we know what kind and type of cucumber we want to plant, we have to determine where. We will need at least 8 to 10 hours of direct sunlight. Read this article to see tips on germination.

There are many articles on the internet that talk about soil preparation. We build a raise bed, put in the garden mix from our local nursery. Then we add some sort of trellis.

There are some gardeners who go all out and build beautiful, raised beds. If you have the money (cash) to spend then by all means build to suit your fancy. I have found that using horse troughs is the easiest way to put in raised beds.

Cucumbers can be planted in a single file or in a hill. Single file, plant about 1 seed every 6 inches. If in a hill, plant 5 seeds with hills being 12 to 18 inches apart.

Plant about ¼ inch down. You can start indoors but cucumbers are such fast growers that it really does not make sense to do this, in my opinion.

Cucumbers are not limited by the heat like tomatoes are. Here in our part of the world, tomatoes must be started early or just as they start to produce, it gets too hot and they will not produce when the temperatures do not get down to 75° at night. However, cherry and grape tomatoes will produce no matter what the heat.

If growing on a trellis, you may want to train your cucumbers towards it. Once they find it they will start to grow on it with no problem.

Pick when they are ready. Ready depends on what you are growing. Do not let them get bigger than the recommended size unless you are saving seeds. If you do you will have a cucumber that is mostly seed.

Water according to the germination tips article that I wrote, referenced above.

Fertilize every two weeks with an organic fertilizer. We use a variety of Medina HastaGro and Garretts Juice. Use according to instructions. The company is only 40 miles from us so we can go and buy it when we need it.

I have not lost any cucumbers to mice, squirrels or birds.

But I have lost plants and fruits to a number of bugs.

Put pictures with bugs:

Visit this page to learn how to combat beetles.

Here is a picture of one type of beetle.

Once again this is just one type. There are many. There is even one that looks similar to the lady bug. You will need to compare pictures so you do not get them mixed up.

Our main problem here is the squash bug. These can be killed with Spinosad which is organic, but it is a constant battle. We use only organic insecticides and rotate these. Amazon has a good selection. And we spray at night so as not to hurt the bees.

Here are several pictures of the squash bug. The pictures show the eggs, the babies and the adults. There are many adaptations to this one. You can put on a pair of gloves and squash them.

We use Fogg-it Nozzles to irrigate our plants. We add the insect killer or fertilizer to a container that mixes it and feeds it to our nozzles. Some say this is not the way to do it, but I have never had any fungi development because of it. It is probably because of our area, hot and dry.

If your area is prone to fungi, there are many organic types available.

If all goes well, your garden will produce a ton of cucumbers from just a few plants.

Happy Growing.

Read my article on Growing Tomatoes which are usually grown with Cucumbers.