Once the warmth of summer comes on, cucumbers are a favorite addition to summer salads and sandwiches. Growing cucumbers at home is surprisingly easy, and you’ll find that the ones you grow are far superior to anything you can buy at the store. Whether used to make pickles, eaten fresh from the vegetable garden, or used for their juice, cucumber is a great source of vitamins and micronutrients. They’re packed with water and fiber, two things essential to our health. And they’re low-calorie, making them a favorite food of the diet-conscious. Let’s not forget that the plants themselves are a bright green and will enliven your vegetable garden space with a mat of dense, fat leaves. Hiding within those vines or bushes can be an abundance of delicious food if you just follow this guide!
Cucumbers By Use
Generally, there are two, sometimes three, categories that cucumbers fall under in terms of how they’re used. Slicing cucumbers or fresh-eating cucumbers are those which are used in salads. These tend to be crisp, juicy, and tasty in most fresh-use situations. Many slicing cucumbers also have thinner skins. Pickling cucumbers have thicker skins and slightly denser, drier flesh which takes well to absorbing pickle brine. These are a common storage cucumber. While pickling cucumbers can still be eaten fresh, they’re most popular for pickling use. Sometimes there’s a third category, the snacking cucumbers. These are used both for fresh eating and for pickling, but tend to be much smaller in size than either pickling or slicing cucumbers. Sometimes these are referred to as cocktail cucumbers. However, snacking cucumbers can easily be categorized in one or both of the other categories.
Cucumbers By Growth
All cucumbers are a form of vine, but not all cucumbers are bush types. Bush cucumbers tend to be more compact and good for small-space growing. These are considered great greenhouse plants, hydroponic plants, or container plants. The best containers for cucumbers are right in our store. Try the 5-gallon Air Pot the next time you grow bush cucumbers. Some form of support or trellis may be needed, but bush cucumbers usually only take up 2-3 square feet of space. In addition, some greenhouse or hydroponic types are self-fruitful, meaning that they don’t need outside pollination. Vining cucumbers are those which splay out long vines from a central plant base. These are often grown on a trellis if space is limited, but may also be grown flat on the ground. These can take up a lot more real estate than a bush cucumber might, but they make up the vast majority of cucumber varieties.
How To Plant Cucumbers
Cucumbers are extremely frost-sensitive, so you don’t want to plant cucumbers too early. At the very earliest, plant your cucumber seeds at least two weeks after the last possible frost date. You should only plant in warm soil, at least 70 degrees Fahrenheit is needed for seeds to germinate. Those of us who like planting cucumbers indoors ahead of time can use a seedling heat mat set to 70 degrees. Sow seeds 3-4 weeks before you want to transplant your young seedling plants. This should get them off to a great start.
Cucumbers are a full-sun plant, so no matter where they’re placed, you’ll want at least eight hours of sunlight a day to keep them happy. Bush cucumbers are quite happy as container plants. When space is limited, these are perfect options for planting cucumbers.
By comparison, vining cucumbers can take up quite a lot of space, so plan ahead for these. You can also train and grow cucumbers up a trellis to reduce space. Or grow cucumbers upside-down using a modified five-gallon bucket or an upside-down tomato plant container. Just be careful to regularly pick your produce so that you don’t put stress on the plant’s roots! These plants can be susceptible to various fungal plant diseases if they’re too tightly packed together. This is especially true if their leaves are regularly wet and don’t dry out quickly. Container-grown cucumbers are growing in popularity, and we’ve got a fantastic video with tips for keeping them producing throughout the season!
Transplanted cucumber plants grown up a trellis can be spaced about a foot apart, where bush plants prefer about 36″ apart. Vining types that aren’t grown upward should have at least 60″ spacing to enable them to spread.
Directly-sown cucumbers should be handled in a similar spacing pattern as transplanted cucumber seedlings. Place 3-4 cucumber seeds in each 1″ deep hole, and once they’ve germinated, thin down to the strongest plant or two. Find more cucumber spacing info in our piece on the topic. Often, people will plant their vining cucumbers in hills. Make a mound of soil, 3-4″ tall, and plant your seeds in the center of the hill. The vines will then grow downward and around the mound. And, to set you and your plants up for success, plant some cucumber companion plants nearby.