Cucumbers
Ease of Growing [Scale 1-5] - 1 (Easy)
How Time Consuming
Watering, pinching out and supporting.
Recommended Varieties
- Burpless Tasty Green F1 – is a variety resistant to mildew.
- Marketmore AGM give a large yield of short, slightly spiny fruits, has good disease resistence.
Home Grown Vs Supermarket
The fresh taste and the firmer texture is far better than any supermarket bought cucumbers which are often going soft when we buy them because they have not been freshly picked.
Best Sites and Soils
Cucumbers need lots of sun, good soil and moisture. They can be grown in large pots, in grow bags or direct in the ground. Either in greenhouses or outside depending on the variety. If you choose to grow in the ground choose a different site each year to avoid build up of pests and disease. Feed the plants weekly with a liquid tomato feed to keep them cropping well.
When to sow
Sow seeds under cover from March to May. Sow the large seeds singly on the edge of pots to prevent rotting, 1cm/1/2” deep, 3 to a small pot. Place in a warm place ideally a heated propagator or a sunny windowsill or heated greenhouse. Once the first true leaves have grown replant into 5” pots. The young plants can then be hardened off in a cold frame and transferred into pots or growbags in May-June after the threat of frost has gone.
Distance between plants - Half a metre between plants.
When to harvest
Harvest when cucumbers are a good size but not too big by using a knife - do not pull off as you will damage the plant. Harvest regularly as leaving cucumbers to grow bigger will stop the development of new ones coming on.
