2024 Cucumbers
I had helped start a swarm by adding every variety I had on hand and from multiple heirloom seed companies. I did include slicing types and pickling types together, and various colors. Orange, green, white varieties of cucumbers are mixed as well as the seed contributions from growers in our seed community.
However, now I’m thinking the slicing and pickling types could be split up and devoted to the specific culinary uses.
What should we do?
Ive been gardening for many years and can seperate the two types at harvest depending if I’m making a salad or a batch of dill pickles. We taste test everything and cucumbers are often rated for that bitter aftertaste or the spines on the skin. I do select for sweet cucumbers and medium tender skin.
I must report more than half of my first planting was destroyed by curious dogs who pawed through the fence and broke off 3/4 of the plants.
Has anyone planted cucumbers?
I can’t replant until fall when the soil temps are back to about 80 degrees.
I direct seed into the ground and have better germination and growing of plants than by using plug trays or containers. My soil is strictly organic and I amend with earth worm castings and composted wood chips.
8a/8b. Mixed GTS with trades with farmers and an old packet of seed I found. Direct sown. I’m down to just three plants. Now it’s a race to see if they can fruit before the oppressive heat sets in. We are already in the 90s so they are not in the good zone.
Yikes! But I’m in a similar situation, I had 50 seeds planted next to the fence for a trellis, but down to 11 plants. But I can grow again starting late July or August. Hoping I get a few cucumbers for seed.
Just today I direct seeded maybe around 70+ cukes around the bases of some hazelnut trees that I pruned back heavily to act as trellises. Each tree got about 6 seeds around it. My worry from here is the slug and snail pressure. There are thousands of them. Im doing something similar with pole beans, and they are getting hammered, but a few are hanging on so far.
The only irrigation will most likely be rain, unless it ends up being very dry for very long. And i do not intend to fertilize.
I think I am landracing for slug and snails resistance this year…
If there is anything picture worthy ill make sure to share.
We have snails too, very few slugs and the cucumbers doesn’t seem to mind, but there are just a few to count. Just dont plant very deep, like 1/2 inch direct sow if possible and keep the birds from eating the baby sprouts. I have to put up pvc pipe and bird netting to keep out everything that can fly in and devour baby plants. I’ve noticed the seed germinates a bit slower than commercial varieties.
My cucumbers may be getting some…strong selection pressure.
My first planting of cucumbers was about 50 plants, transplanted the second week of May. I planted the GTS mix and a variety of pickling cukes I had in packets. This was a week before our usual last frost date of May 20th but we’ve had a very warm spring.
Although the weather has been perfect for cukes, my first planting was absolutely decimated by pests. We’ve had insane populations of cucumber beetles, flea beetles, aphids, the works… I think because spring was a month early all the pest/predator populations are out of whack.
The 6 or so surviving cucumber plants do seem to be recovering but they will be delayed. I’ve planted a second batch to join them.
I also picked up 4 pots of pickling cukes (3 already-fruiting plants in each) from the nursery across the street to get my super early batch of pickles going next week. I’m not sure if I should save seeds from these plants, as they were grown to fruiting size in a greenhouse environment so who knows how they’d have handled my brand of neglect and torture?
Maybe determine what the variety is… that you got from the greenhouse. I used to get plug trays of all sorts of transplants and they seem to do well. Unless you get multiple varieties growing and fruiting together, then the seed wont be moving towards being a landrace. I would still save seeds and grow them again and add some more variety the next season. Do you know if the variety is an heirloom?
But the last two years I’ve tried to kick the habit of using trays since all these trays need to be cleaned to reuse or disposed of. For me, its just too much extra handling. I put more energy and amendments into my growing space by adding good compost, earth worm castings, soilder fly frass, epsom salt, and coffee grounds, mycorrhizae too. Bulk spent coffee grounds are free from the coffee shops and easily sprinkled around the garden. I really liked the class on the GTS homepage about endophytes and how they help the soil and seed…so I try to keep better soil. Its challenging as I started with sand. My Dad had similar issues being on the east coast and starting with clay. He amended similarly over 20 years adding wood chip compost and animal manures. Strictly organic, but always giving back to the soil.
At the end of the day, I really enjoy my garden and I just keep growing, harvesting, eating and saving seeds.
I definitely have lots of cucumber variety from the seed packets and GTS mix I will definitely be saving seeds from the plants that survived my early spring pest gauntlet, and later plantings as well.
My own plants will start fruiting a couple weeks later than the plants I picked up from the greenhouse, which were probably started earlier and didnt suffer the same pest pressure. Im wondering whether saving seeds from coddled greenhouse plants as well as the others is overall good (more variety!) or bad (no natural selection for local conditions).
I grow 99% of my vegetable garden from seed, but I like supporting my local nursery. They’re directly across the street from the garden. I’ve been bringing my service dog there since she was a tiny puppy in training and she loves the greenhouse and people there. I usually get a flat or two of annual flowers to fill in gaps in my flowerbeds every year, and sometimes a veggie or two that will give me an extra-early start. We’ve been craving brined pickles, this will get us 2-3 week earlier pickles.
I love starting my own seedlings indoors and am not looking to change that for myself. I live somewhere with a longish winter - my plant babies make me feel happy and alive when the ground is frozen. Starting indoors also just works better with my particular brand of distracted ADHD - starting outdoors I forget where I planted things and am terrible at labeling so I miss watering, weed out my own plantings, plant other stuff on top by accident, get impatient and deliberately plant stuff on top…its a disaster. In neat trays lined up I am much better at caring for little seedlings.
Plastic waste is a concern - what works best for me is I use quad-thick 1020 trays and air-pruning cells/winstrip trays over and over again - no special washing/sterilizing, I just rinse them out and stack them for the next use.
My garden soil is pretty great. Sandy loam with lots of organic matter (I add lots of local free/cheap material - coffee grounds, autumn leaves, grass clippings, compost, hay, straw, manure…) If it wasnt so full of big bugs, I’d use it for my indoor seedlings. Still working on that problem…maybe leaf mold?
Can hardly wait for this growing seasons seed. As my first planting is probably considered a fail…hoping the fall planting makes seeds in time. Glad your having some grow and produce fruits.
Your garden sounds wonderfull and vibrant and so very glad you support local.
Just hoping this growing season yields seed for every grower to keep planting.
Im curious to see @LeeAngold your “big bugs” from your compost, beetles of some sort?
We just get pill bugs and ear wigs for a few stages of composting…then they disappear. But I wouldnt trade my compost for fertilizer as it really supports most everything I grow.
I planted my GTS cucumber seeds last week; a mix of 2023 GTS seeds, seed I saved from the mix last year, and Suyo Long cucumbers from High Mowing Seeds. Suyo Long are our favorite cucumbers for taste, and they produce well in years with decent weather, though they don’t seem to be as resilient in bad years. I’m hoping for a Suyo-long style grex.
The seed I saved from 2023 had quite an adventure. Due to abnormally cold, wet weather and three hailstorms, all the cucumbers just sat and sulked. (It didn’t make things better that I had planted them in depressions.) Finally, late in the year, three GTS plants each set one stunted little fruit a piece. I figured that seed could be very valuable. But when I came out one morning, a squirrel had made off with one of them. The next day, I came out just in time to see a squirrel making off with another one! I chased the squirrel across the yard, and it dropped the cucumber when it had to climb a fence, so I was able to rescue the cucumber and save seeds.
Looking forward to seeing how they do this year. My plan is to let every cucumber in the yard set at least one fruit to make sure that I eliminate any bitter fruited plants, and I’ve arranged the planting to make correlating fruits with plants a bit easier. I’ve planted seed thickly at stations about a foot apart, and will thin each station down to the strongest plant, and then train them away from one another.
@MalcolmS Geez, one hungry squirrel to mess with your garden. Glad to hear you could retrieve your cuke for seeds. I have really forgotten about strong storms with hail and how devastating the precipitation can damage a garden.
We just cook in the sun, with everything drying to a crisp.
We just keep growing and try again when the soil temperatures cool down. I’m determined to get cucumbers from direct seeding.
I planted the GTS cucumbers with some seed I saved from cucumbers last year and also a grex I got from trading on this site. I direct seeded them on a 50 foot long mound I made of buried barn beams covered with my composted goat manure. I put a couple seeds every foot apart and most have sprouted without watering. There was a light frost on May 31st that killed a couple but most seemed to not even notice
Nice garden photos, its a great set up and the plants look really happy. The GTS seed has many colors and sizes of cukes. Im thinking pickling cucumbers and slicers are mixed together so keep that in mind as you see and taste the fruits. Maybe we should seperate them? I often ask myself if they should be separate because of how differently they are used in culinary dishes. Any thoughts are appreciated.
Thanks I am excited to see the different colours and sizes I usually just grow the straight 8 boring ones. Yes I agree since they are used so differently it would be helpful to have separate seeds. When I save my cucumber seeds Im going to keep them separate and in future years plant them in there own patches
@DawsonL thanks for the input…im thinking there are so many varieties of each slicer cucucumber type and the pickling cucumber type that they could be split into two seperate grex catagories. Its easy enough to do and if someone wanted to mix them all together, they could.
One thing about keeping the types separate; since the GTS material has now been mixed up for several years, how could we separate it at this point? Unless we wanted to go back to the drawing board and start with know varieties.
Can small fruits of slicing types be used for pickling?
Well, maybe. Since we have mixed varieties some pickling cuke traits may have blended with the slicers. Flavor, texture, skin thickness, bitterness are all some traits to think about as we taste them and then determine how to utilize them for food. Some cukes are eaten fresh, while the pickling type is covered in hot brine and water bath canned for tasty pickles enjoyed at a later date. The cukes have a thicker skin and firmer flesh.
Yes, getting them to grow is very important and also at the top of my selection list. I wonder if there are many dual purpose varieties. Good flavor as a selection criterion is also on the list since eating fresh vegetables is the best treat each season.
I remember seeing somewhere that there are over 100 varieties of cucumber. But I dont know if they are all split into two categories of slicing or pickling?
I just had to ask the question to see what is important for the cucumber growers.
For now I’m thinking the seed increase is important to give us plenty of taste testing opportunities and getting them to grow well.
Im thinking of five years ahead and if we should think about types.
I had about 95 percent germination, good growth just until the vines started to climb and then our dog pawed through the trellis and chewed them all up. Im devestated but will grow again. I still have a few seeds from the mix and can start them again in August. I have two growing seasons and can try again. Ive grown the best Asian cuke varieties before and they are delicious for fresh salads, but didnt try to pickle them.
My only concern at this point is pest resistance. Squash bugs, cucumber beetles, aphids, and some kind of beetle that resembles a ladybug but eats cucurbits, absolutely demolished all my cucumbers last year. They didn’t even set seed.
This year am growing the GTS mix. Didn’t get around to planting until the end of June, so they are still in seedling stage at the moment. Doing fine so far. Last year, my cucumbers did well until they flowered and then the pests destroyed them.
@YrtheArts thank you for sharing about the insect pressure in your garden. Its got to be horrible watching them eat your plants. Have you attempted to grow companion plants? Or perhaps some herbs and flowers to keep insects busy away from the cucumbers? Its not a 100 percent protection but has helped inside my garden…there is always insect pressure. I have also added soilder fly frass, (chitin) to the garden soil to help the plants protect themselves from insects. Also I’ve found that dotting cucumber plants around the entire garden, randomly helps as well. Cucumbers can grow by and intermixed with beans, cabbage, cauliflower, corn, lettuce, peas, radishes, and sunflowers…they dont like rue or sage nor potatoes. I had chamomile come up everywhere this past spring and it seemed to keep insects at bay, no plant sucking insects. Also hollyhocks grow every year and reseed themselves.
What is the size of your garden?
Each year my plan is to include seed from as many organic sources as possible, somewhere there has to be a cucumber variety that can survive the insects. We must be determined to find it.
Hoping something works, keep planting…also nasturtiums, marigold, onions, dill, and garlic may also help keep pests manageable. I have mixed small handfulls of companion seeds together at planting time. So as I’m sowing seeds I have a mix that does well together…just be mindful of spacing. I typically dont have rows, and eventually hand broadcast the smaller seeds everywhere. So I end up with a carpet of edible plants…as I harvest I make a path. However, I do have to crosscheck to be sure the companion plants grow in the same season as the plant Im trying to protect.
Check out thespruce.com webpage, they offer information on how to keep cucumber plants growing with companion plants that also thwart insect pests.
Just sharing what has worked inside my garden. Also, The Old Farmers Almanac has companion planting information.
I will definitely be saving seeds from the plants that survived my early spring pest gauntlet, and later plantings as well.
