Cool as a cucumber
Tips for growing your own refreshing creeping vine delicacy
You will find a wide variety of cucumbers available from seed company catalogs and on the seed racks of your favorite garden center.
Add a cool, refreshing twist to your meals, beverages, appetizers and snacks with cucumbers. These popular vegetables are grown worldwide, adding anti-inflammatory vitamin K, vitamins C, B-5 and more to your meals. Take it a step further by using your own fresh-from-thegarden cucumbers.
Grow cucumbers sprawled on the ground or in a container on your patio, balcony or deck. Save space and train them up a decorative support. They make great vertical accents in containers as well as edible and ornamental gardens. Going vertical not only saves space, it improves productivity by reducing disease problems while also making harvesting easier.
You will find a wide variety of cucumbers available from seed company catalogs and on the seed racks of your favorite garden center.
Check with the Michigan State Univer
sity Extension Agriculture site (canr.msu.edu/ agriculture) for recommendations for your location.
Select the best cucumber for your garden space, meals and snacks. Bush types like Salad Bush produce 8-inch slicing cucumbers on a small plant. Spacemaster is a compact plant, spreading 24 inches and suitable for containers and hanging baskets. All-America Selections winner Saladmore Bush is another semi-bush plant that starts producing cucumbers in 55 days from planting.
Green Light is a 2020 All-America Selections winner that produces an abundance of great tasting mini cucumbers. Grow to the other extreme with burpless type cucumbers that can be harvested when much larger. They have been bred to contain little or no cucurbitacin, which tastes bitter and makes you burp when you eat them.
Seeds must be planted later in spring after danger of frost has passed. Plant seeds 1 ½ half to 1 inch deep in properly prepared soil. Plant several cucumber seeds in a large container or in rows or hills in the garden. Space seeds 12 inches apart in rows 36 inches apart. Or plant several seeds in hills (small mounds of soil) spaced 36 inches apart.
Water thoroughly and often enough to keep the soil slightly moist. Apply a 1- to 2-inch layer of shredded leaves, evergreen needles or other organic matter over the soil surface to conserve moisture, suppress weeds and reduce the risk of soil borne diseases.
Watch for the first flush of flowers 50 to 70 days after planting. The first set of flowers are all male flowers, so no fruit can form. Soon male and female flowers will appear for bees to pollinate and fruit to develop.
Harvest your cucumbers based on how you plan to use them. Pick when 1 ½ to 2 ½ inches long for making sweet pickles and 3 to 4 inches for dills. Harvest slicing cucumbers when the fruit is firm, green, crisp and 6 to 8 inches long. Burpless-type cucumbers will maintain their flavor at even larger sizes. Check the seed packet for harvesting directions.
With proper selection, planting and care you will be rewarded with an abundant harvest. So be prepared to enjoy, preserve and share your homegrown fresh cucumbers.
Melinda Myers has written more than 20 gardening books, including “Small Space Gardening,” and hosts The Great Courses “How to Grow Anything”
DVD series and the nationally syndicated Melinda’s Garden Moment TV & radio program.
Visit MelindaMyers.com