How to Grow Cucumbers Successfully
Cucumbers are a must-have for your summer veggie garden. They’ve gained a rather unfair reputation for being “difficult.” We’d like to say that growing cucumbers is actually quite easy – when you know how! Let’s get started and fast-track you to success with all the basics you need to grow an awesome cucumber crop. Hint: it’s way easier than you might think!
Where do Cucumbers Come From?
The ancestors of the cucumbers we grow today originated in India. They’ve been grown as a food crop for over 3,000 years, spreading through Asia before becoming a favorite in Europe. At the same time, wild cucumbers grew naturally in Africa and North America – but despite the name, wild cucumbers aren’t related to the ones we eat and enjoy today.
Cucumbers arrived in the Americas thanks to European traders. They were already being cultivated by native American tribes in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains in the 16th century. Today, the US is the 4th-largest producer of cucumbers in the world.
Ideal Climate for Cucumbers
Cucumbers thrive in frost-free, warm, wet conditions. Cucumbers prefer full sun. This means that you should select a site that gets 6 to 8 hours of direct sunshine every day. Ideally, growing temperatures should range between 70 and 80°F, but cucumbers will tolerate a range between 60 and 85°F. In the US, this means that your Zone 9 and 10 cucumber growing season is from April to September with care taken to avoid frost. In zones 3 through 8, you’ll grow them in the warmest time of the year when soil temperatures are around 50-70°F.
Ideal Soil for Cucumbers
Cucumbers aren’t terribly fussy about soil conditions, but they do best in well-drained yet moist soils with high organic content and a slightly acidic pH of 6-6.5. Practically speaking, that means working in lots of compost. If you’re checking pH, be sure to do so a few weeks after composting since some composts have a pH as high as 8.
If you’d like to dig in some extra fertilizer, choose a pre-planting enrichment of 5-10-10 slow release fertilizer. You can add side dressings of nitrogen fertilizer weekly once flowering begins. It’s not a must, but it will boost your harvest.
Compost, Drainage, and Water Retention
Whether your soil is light or heavy, compost is the start of your journey towards success with summer squash. If your soil is heavy and you don’t have raised beds, adding compost improves drainage. It also increases soil volume, so you can easily build up the soil level to make your beds higher – and that improves drainage too.
If your soil is light, compost helps it to hold enough water to keep your plants happy while adding its share of nutrients. Remember, naturally well-drained soil is awesome, but nutrients wash through it pretty quickly, so you’ll need to feed your plants more often.
Bush or Vining
Cucumber plants come in all shapes and sizes and can be broken down into 2 basic categories. Bush and vining, and they are exactly as they sound. Bush cucumbers are a nice “lazy” alternative since they don’t require support. However, they don’t bear as much fruit as the vining cucumber varieties do. Some gardeners allow vining cucumbers to sprawl along the ground, but you’ll have much better success if you give them some support. I personally love the cattle Panel Trellis.
Growing Cucumbers
Once you’re happy with the soil temperatures and don’t expect frost, you can sow cucumbers directly where they are to grow. As an alternative, many gardeners like to start them in 4” pots in a protected area. They’ll be planted out once the frosts are over and they’ll start bearing earlier.
There are various approaches to growing cucumbers. Making little “hills” or mounds for them allows water to drain away from the stems. If you choose this approach, you can easily create teepee-like structures or use a tomato cage for them to climb up. Each mound will be 1 to 1.5ft wide and a few inches in height. Space each mound about one to two feet apart. You’ll sow two or three seeds per mound, but you’ll only choose the strongest plant to grow on each mound once the plants sprout and begin to grow.
You can try sowing cucumbers in rows. Sow them about 6” apart and leave 3 to 5 feet of space between rows. Since cucumbers don’t like growing in soggy conditions, you can build up the rows a little to improve drainage.
Whichever approach you choose, sow your seeds about 1” deep to promote strong roots and increase germination rates.
Growing Cucumbers in Containers
If you grow cucumbers in containers, you don’t need to worry about creating mounds. Just make sure you’re using a well-draining medium. A 5 gallon container will hold one plant, and if you have something a little bigger, that’s even better. A 10 gallon grow bag is ideal to grow an individual plant.
Caring for Cucumbers
Watering
The first thing to do for your cucumbers is to ensure that they have moist but not soggy soil. You can help to keep soil moist by mulching your plants well. Check your soil moisture with the finger test – dipping your fingertip into the soil to the first joint to feel whether the soil is moist. Morning watering is best. Try to keep water off the leaves and apply it at soil level instead. This reduces the chance of developing fungal diseases.
Feeding
Feeding begins at soil preparation, but once your vines begin to flower, they’ll appreciate some extra nutrition. Liquid feeding offers a safe option. Alternatively, a complete fertilizer higher in nitrogen applied as side dressing and watered in well will do the trick.
Pruning
Bush cucumbers rarely need any pruning, but pruning your climbing cucumbers will help to improve your harvests by focussing the plant’s energy to its most productive shoots. You’ll be able to remove any sickly parts of the plant at the same time.
The cucumber plant will develop a main stem or “leader” shoot, and it’s the one you want to nurture.
Prune off any side shoots that develop from the lowest five to seven nodes. This helps to protect your plants from disease. Catch them before they develop too much and leave them if it looks like pruning them off will create a major wound. Pinch off any flowers developing low on the plant. You want the fruit to develop towards the top. The same goes for flowers that begin developing while your plant is still young. Pinch out the flowers to encourage vegetative growth, shoots and leaves, for the first couple weeks.
If the leaves look very dense, pinch out a few of them to promote air circulation and keep your plant healthy. If you see any damaged shoots, leaves, or fruits, prune them out too.
Troubleshooting
Watch your pants for aphids, mites, or whitefly. You can control them with a non-toxic insecticidal soap. Cucumber beetles and caterpillars can be picked off by hand. Some gardeners like to cover their cucumber plants with mesh to limit pest activity.
Powdery and downy mildew are the most common fungal diseases to guard against. Keep the soil around your cucumbers free of debris and weeds and keep the leaves as dry as possible when watering. If you pick up mildew, try using a mixture of 40 percent milk and 60 percent water as a non-toxic fungicide.
Harvesting Cucumbers
Your first cucumbers should be ready to harvest in 50 to 70 days after planting. Once they start, you’ll be picking fresh cucumbers every few days. Catch them before they get too big – old cucumbers taste bitter and their seeds begin to harden.
There are many different types of cucumbers, so it’s good to know what size your variety should be at harvesting. Check your seed packs or plant tags to know what you are looking for. As a rule of thumb, harvest slicing cucumbers when they are 6 to 8 inches long, and pickling varieties between 2 and 4 inches long. Some of the burpless cucumber varieties like Suyo Long can be as big as 10 inches long at harvest.
Always cut your cucumbers from the vine to prevent damage – and keep up with picking to keep your vines productive as long as possible!
Preserving
Believe it or not, you can freeze cucumbers. The only problem is that they’ll lose their crispness when they defrost. All the same, you can use them in recipes for soups and dips – or even in refreshing juices and smoothies. Slice them, place them on a baking sheet, and put them in the freezer for a few hours. Then transfer them to a freezer container until you need them.
When it comes to pickling, we’re on firmer ground. You can make refrigerator pickles using any type of cucumber – even slicing varieties – and they’ll last for about two months in the fridge. A more traditional pickle can last for up to six months. There are plenty of recipes for pickling cucumbers – so we’ll leave it to you to find the one that sounds best for you!
