Cucumbers present a convincing argument for drip-irrigation and rainwater tanks — they are thirsty! Drippers on top of the soil, under a nice 5cm — 7cm layer of mulch and directed around the base of your plants is perfect. If you must hand water cucumbers, make sure you do it first thing in the morning ensuring that you are aiming mainly at the root zone of the plant avoiding the foliage. If you want gherkins, pick the long, green cucumbers when they are about 5cm — 10cm in length.
Same deal for Lebanese cucumbers. The round apple shaped cucumbers are best picked when they are about tennis ball size.
Cucumbers generally take about 8 — 10 weeks to ripen, stretching out to 12 — 14 weeks for apple cucumbers. Pulling them off can snap the vine in half and seriously jeopardise the rest of your crop. Cut the cucumbers off with a sharp pair of clean scissors or secateurs, making sure you leave a bit of stem attached to the fruit. Pests and the Rest Cucumbers, like many vines, are susceptible to fungal infections.
Prevention is much better than a cure so; clean straw mulch, drip irrigation, good air movement, a trellis or support and root level or early morning watering should deter fungal spores. Another issues faced by the cucumber is lack of bee activity to pollinate the flowers.
Encourage bees into your patch by planting a diverse selection of flowering companion plants, edible and non-edible. This will hopefully reduce the use of unnecessary pesticides in the garden that often wipe out the good guys as well as the bad. You can hand pollinate your cucumbers if you are concerned; simply pick a male flower one without a small fruit forming at the base and touch it lightly onto the centre stem of the female flower.
Final Tip Give your cucumbers a little pinch! Pinch out growing tips when they have formed about five to seven leaves; also pinch out the laterals side shoots that have produced a number of leaves about eight to ten but no female flowers the ones with the miniature cucumber where the petals start. Cucumbers can be further characterized as bush or vining cucumbers. Most varieties grow as a vine but some grow as a bush and these are well suited to grow in containers.
Some of the vine varieties are less sprawling than others and will sometimes be defined as semi-vining. These can work in a container with a short trellis.
Parisian Pickling is a good variety to make cornichons. Cornichons are tiny pickled cucumbers, inches, that pack a strong burst of flavor. You see them sometimes at a salad bar.
Burpless cucumber varieties do not contain the compound called cucurbitacins that leads to a bitter taste in the cucumbers. Pickling cucumber varieties typically have bumpy skin and are harder with less water content. They are shorter and ready to harvest when they are inches long. They usually produce sooner than slicing cucumbers but will fruit for a shorter amount of time, around weeks.
Slicing cucumbers are usually smooth skinned and eaten fresh. These are typically the cucumbers you see in grocery stores. Slicing cucumbers grow longer anywhere from inches and will fruit for weeks. This will cause the cucumber plant to continuously fruit and have bigger yields.
Cucumbers left on the plant to fully ripen will turn yellow and be hard and bitter as well as signal to the plant to stop producing fruit. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Skip to content Table of Contents. Cucumbers are a vine crop requiring a lot of space.
The vines can reach 6 to 8 feet long or more. In large gardens, cucumbers can spread out on the ground. Plant them in rows on the ridges prepared earlier. Use a hoe or stick to make a small furrow about 1 inch deep down the center of each ridge. Drop three or four seeds in groups every 12 to 14 inches down the row Fig.
By planting several seeds, you are more likely to get a stand. Remove extra plants soon after emergence. Figure 3. When planting cucumbers, drop three or four seeds in groups every 12 to 14 inches in the row. Cover the seeds with about 1 inch of fine soil.
Use the flat side of a hoe to firm the soil over the seeds, but do not pack it. In small gardens, you can train cucumbers on a fence, trellis or cage if wire is available Figs. Plant three or four seeds in hills 4 to 6 inches high along the trellis or cage. You can plant fast-maturing crops such as lettuce and radishes between the cucumber hills to save space.
These will be harvested before the cucumber vines get too large. Figure 4. In a small garden, cucumbers can be trained along a wire attached to a wall. Figure 5. If a wire cage is used, plant three or four seeds in hills 4 to 6 inches high along the cage. Cucumbers require plenty of fertilizer. Scatter 1 cup of a complete fertilizer such as or for each 10 feet of row; then work the fertilizer into the soil and leave the surface smooth.
Soak the plants well with water weekly if it does not rain. Keep the cucumbers as weed free as possible. Cucumbers produce two kinds of flowers, male and female.
0コメント