Green in garden, fresh on table.
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Cucumber is one of the most popular vegetable
all over the world.
It is not original Asian vegetable
but has a long growing history in China.
Sure you can buy cucumber easily in stores.
But home grown cucumber is so fresh
and has much more flavors.
Sow cucumber seeds in seed starter directly.
Keep the potting mix moist but not soaking.
Cucumber will grow cotyledon in 10 days.
It likes wet and rich soil
but cannot with stand water logging.
In about a month, it will grow 3~5 leaves
and is ready to transplant.
Add a lot of organic fertilizer in soil.
Turn over the soil and bury the fertilizer deep underneath.
Spread some inorganic fertilizer and mix with top soil.
Plant cucumber seedlings at least 1 ft apart in a row.
Fully water your seedlings after transplanting.
How fast cucumber plants can grow after transplanting
depends on environment temperature and soil richness.
When cucumber vines get longer,
you should build a trellis
and direct the vines up to a trellis.
Tie a string onto top bar,
pull it to middle bar and make a single knot,
extend it to the vine
and make a loose single knot onto the stem.
Twin the vine with string.
One vine on a string, and one string at a ft.
Remove any side sprouts.
In order to produce high quality and more cucumbers,
pruning your cucumber in the right way is very important.
Different types of cucumber have different fruiting habit.
Before pruning, you should know if you cucumber is
main vine fruiting, side vine fruiting or both.
You should be able to find that information
on seed package or from the seed supplier.
Usually big size cucumber fruits on main vine
and small size on side vines.
For main vine fruiting cucumber,
remove all the side sprouts;
for side vines fruiting cucumbers,
keep 2~3 leaves on side vine
and remove the tip.
Cucumber likes warm weather and cannot resist cold weather.
It can grow at temperature between 50~90 F
and the best temperature is 68~77 F.
At temperature lower than 40 F or higher than 95 F,
cucumber will have problem to grow and fruit.
Day and night temperature difference
between 18~28 degree is best for cucumber.
In commercial growing,
when the vines reach the top of trellis,
farmers will loosen the string and drop the vines
so they can continue to grow.
For back yard growing,
I recommend to remove the tip
after main vines reach the top of trellis.
There are reasons for that.
1. Cucumber should produce plenty of fruits for home consuming,
2. A lot of fast nutrients will be needed
to support cucumber vines
to grow taller and fruit at the same time.
So in commercial growing
a lot of inorganic fertilizer, hormone or other chemicals are used;
3. Old vines will have much more serious
bugs, worms and diseases problem.
To control that, you will have to apply a lot of pesticide.
If you want to have a sustainable cucumber supply from your garden,
just grow more plants in another area.
Cucumber will start to flower when it climbs.
Manual pollination will help to ensure better fruiting.
Pick a male flower, remove flower leaves,
and gently touch the female flower.
One male flower can pollinate 2~3 female flowers.
The best time in a day to pollinate a cucumber flower
is 7 am to 10 am.
A successful pollinated cucumber fruit
will grow quickly in few days.
The failed one will wither or stop growing.
I am a 90% organic grower : )
I use a lot of organic fertilizer for transplanting
and do not use chemical pesticide.
I do use some 10-10-10 inorganic fertilizer
fertilizer to top dress my vegetables during flowering and fruiting stage.
Spread some inorganic fertilizer next to cucumber
and gently mix with top soil.
This will help cucumber grow more and better fruits.
Cucumber is such tasty vegetable.
Everybody loves it,
including bugs,worms and bacteria.
Caterpillar, Aphid and powder mildew
are my biggest problem for growing cucumbers.
To reduce the impact from them,
here are few things you can do.
Pruning well helps to keep the plants neat
and well ventilated.
Timely remove any leaves suffering from aphids and mildew.
Throw these leaves in trash can instead of your composter.
Whenever you prune the vines or pollinate the flowers,
pay attention to any caterpillars.
They usually hide in the young shoots,
or under the leaves and fold themselves up.
Find them and pop them.
You can also try some homemade organic pesticide.
They are usually work well on Aphids and mildew for few days.
When the cucumber fruits to the top of trellis,
it is time to remove the vines
vines together with any dead leaves on the ground.
Keeping your garden clean will help
to reduce bugs and diseases problem.
All the cucumbers I grow this year are pretty big size.
Most of them are 1 to 1.5 ft long.
They are Japanese and Chinese varieties
which are usually thin-skin, meaty, juicy and a little bit sweet.
We eat them as fruits
and our friends like to slice and add to salad.
You may think these big cucumbers are too old,
but actually they are still young, crunchy and juicy!
Um...Yummy....
I hope you like it.
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See you soon!