Believe it or not,
cucumbers were the first plant I ever grew when I started gardening.
My brother and I, we went down to the nursery.
We just wanted to do something to get out of the house.
I was playing video games a lot back then and just needed something to kind of
reset myself. And we went to the nursery,
he bought a couple big things of basil, very smart choice,
and I designed a hydroponic system and planted cucumbers in it.
And let me just tell you,
they were the most disgusting cucumbers I've ever bit into in my life.
And I should have quit gardening at that point in time. But I didn't.
And here we are and now we're looking at a beautiful,
beautiful Marketmore 76 cucumber grown in a grow bag.
And that's what we're talking about in today's video.
Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening where it's my goal to help you grow a
greener thumb and avoid the disgusting cucumbers that I created early on in my
gardening life.
So we're going to go over seven different categories of care and consideration
for the cucumber.
And because I made some Epic alliteration right there please cultivate the Like
button for Epic cucumber harvests. And let's get into the video.
Tip number one is considering the type and variety,
right?
These are two things that go hat in hand and I really am starting to say to
myself, and also as I put material out about gardening,
the variety selection is so, so important. Because you just,
it's a mistake that if you make it,
you now have to grow your mistake out for the whole season. Okay?
So when it comes to a cucumber, you have two main growth habit types.
You have your bushing types and your vining types.
Now cucumbers naturally are vining climbing plants.
They actually have tendrils that they put out to attach to structure.
And in fact,
the one that I just touched has attached itself to the stem of another cucumber
leaf. So there's a little climbing-ception going on right there.
But that's the natural type.
Breeders have created a lot of different bushy style varieties for us container
or small space gardeners because maybe we don't have six feet of trellis to put
it up. Maybe we do want a more compact variety.
One that I grew that was a bushing type last year was Iznik F1. F1 means
it's a hybrid plant so it's been bred for specific traits and the bushing trait
was one of those. So it was a really nice one.
I grew it in a five gallon bucket. It was absolutely amazing!
Now you also have the variety as far as flavor and use.
So you have your slicing cucumbers, long thin.
The Marketmore 76 is a slicing cucumber right here.
And then you also have your pickling cucumbers, right?
Those ones are a little shorter, the flesh is a little bit drier.
It's bred to kind of accept that brine and really create that nice pickle that
we know and love.
So you need to choose the growth habit type and you also need to choose the
specific flavor or the specific use case you're going to grow that cucumber for.
If you want a funky pick, I'll always leave you guys with some varieties.
You have lemon cucumbers. They're globular spherical ones, as the name implies,
kind of like a light cream yellow. Very prolific, very easy to grow.
I found the flavor wasn't quite there for me. So while it looked cool,
I wanted something that was just a classic tasty cucumber cause I do love to eat
them. Then you've got Marketmore 76. This is the one that I have right here.
This is a very, very, very popular one. You can find it almost everywhere.
It has a lot of good qualities as far as its growth and its flavor.
And then anything with the word bush in it,
if you're going for a more compact variety - pickle bush,
Bushmaster I think is one. Spacemaster is another good one.
So these are all ones that you can do if you really are trying to go in a
compact space. Tips two and three, soil and watering.
It really wants a nice rich soil because it's a heavy feeder,
it's putting out a lot of vegetative growth.
It's putting out a lot of fruits and flowers and something has to support that.
So the soil is what's supporting that.
And the other thing is it really needs consistent watering.
Not flush with water, not flooded, and certainly not dried out.
That's what's going to really be the killer of cucumbers.
You'll notice it really quickly as these leaves will start to wilt.
These leaves are nice and crisp. When I like move them,
they kind of spring right back to their normal form.
Sign of a well-watered leaf, right?
So what I've done is I'm growing it in a grow bag and that's because I can pick
it up and move it back here. I can move it outside, I can be portable with it.
But grow bags tend to dry out a little bit and other containers can as well.
So what I would say is early on in its life,
you can feel pretty comfortable just overhead watering it.
As it grows up to a phase more like this I would highly recommend throwing a
drip spike on there or hand watering with a watering can or just watering at the
base of the plant. Another thing you can do,
if you have a container that can wick water up,
is you can put this in a larger basin, pour water into that basin,
maybe an inch or so and boom, that soil will just suck it right up.
And then you have a more consistent amount of moisture because that,
as far as your care of the cucumber, will be the number one killer.
You will underwater it and it will quickly die. Tip four is fertilization.
Now a lot of the fertilization comes in when you actually build the soil in the
first place. Whether you're growing it outdoors inground or in raised beds,
just building a good raised bed soil is going to help. And also in containers,
the mix that you choose is going to do a really big job,
but it's still going to want some fertilization throughout the season.
So if you think about organic fertilizers,
you can think about things that provide a little more nitrogen early on for that
growth.
And then also stuff that provides a little more phosphorus potassium as the
plant starts to fruit and flower.
So I might do something like chicken manure early on and then I might move into
like blood and bone meal later on or something of that nature.
Tip five is probably what you all care about the most and that would be how do
you make sure that it flowers, that it fruits,
what kind of problems are you having in that phase of growth?
So the first problem that most people have is early flowers will just fall off.
And if you're moving from spring to summer and temps are still dipping pretty,
pretty low,
that's probably what's happening because these plants evolved in the tropics,
they're not used to that. And so while they will still grow, out of the tropics,
you do have to remember that genetically they're just not used to that.
And so the flowers may drop. As you move into the heat of the summer,
the long warm days and that keeps on happening,
then you may have a watering issue, a disease issue, a nutrient issue,
something like that. But the most common one is that transition.
So I would just keep an eye out for that.
The other thing is unless you've bought a variety or you're growing a variety
that is self pollinating or parthenocarpic,
you do have to have a pollinator population to actually set fruit because
they don't do it themselves, right? So they need the help of mother nature.
You can hand pollinate if you want,
which I'll do a video on sometime in the future,
but what I like to do is I just place my grow bag or my container in an area
that I know bees and other pollinators already are.
So maybe next to my Spanish lavender plant,
maybe next to you know my whole host of beans that I have going on.
And you just need to do that because otherwise you won't get any cucumber.
As far as problems you'll have,
there are quite a few and in the article I've prepared on epicgardening.com
I have exactly what to do for each specific pest and each specific disease,
but I won't go into all of them here.
Cucumber beetles are probably your most annoying one with cukes,
as the name would imply. I find for a lot of flying insect pests,
covering your plants early prevents a lot of that.
Once they get nice and robust, oftentimes the pests don't even want to eat them.
But early on when they're nice and sensitive and weak,
then cover them up with some sort of floating row cover.
It's getting to be summer now.
So a summer-weight style cloth can do a really good job, insect netting.
That prevents a lot of pest issues. And then when it comes to disease, the one,
and you know what it is,
the one that causes the most problems is powdery mildew.
And it looks like a fuzzy sort of dust that starts to appear on the leaves.
Now an ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure. So air flow,
trellising upwards, making sure it doesn't sit laying on the ground,
all good ideas. And again, powdery mildew is super annoying.
So if you have a super affected leaf, then you can chop it off, sacrifice it,
throw it in the burn pit, whatever.
But I've seen a lot of different things work on powdery mildew.
Even just diluted milk sprayed with water can work. There are other things,
like neem oil can work.
It's very difficult to get rid of once it spreads though,
so keep an eye on it and really just try to increase air flow,
decrease humidity a little bit and you will stave it off.
So here is the massive leaf of the cucumber plant.
You can see it's quite thin and this one's a little eaten up because it's
sitting on the ground. Probably had some pests come in, but no big deal.
So this is what can really dry out, right?
This is doing a lot of work for your plant and so you have to make sure you keep
it well watered. Here we can see if we go underneath the canopy,
we have the Marketmore 76. It's a great example of a really nice looking one.
The thing you'll notice is, if you let it sit on the ground,
you get what's called a field spot. It's this lightening right here.
So if you don't like that, then don't let it sit on the ground.
And sitting on the ground can cause some disease issues.
But as we get into the interior of the plant,
you can see we have another flower with some fruit behind it.
So that of course is a female flower because it's got this fruit swelling behind
it. Here's another example of a female flower. That's how you know.
You see that little fruit swelling. Now here, this flower right here is female,
but see this empty stem? That was the male. It's blurring out a little bit,
but that was the male. And so that's how you know which is which.
And then as we go up here, it's kind of a cool little note,
you've got a tendril coming out. And this is how the cucumber attaches, right?
So you can see this tendril decided to attach to the cucumber plant itself right
there, which is kind of cool and kind of neat.
But then you also have examples of where it'll attach to
the actual trellis of which I cannot find one right now.
And you have an example of where I attached a tomato clip just for some extra,
extra support.
Cucumbers are one of the most fun crops to grow cause you felt like you really
did something. You know,
I don't have anything against growing things like lettuce, spinach, kale.
I love it and I grow a ton of it. But when you harvest a huge cucumber,
it feels like you really achieved something in the garden. You can slice it up,
you can pickle it, you can do whatever you want with it.
So I hope these tips helped.
There's actually quite a bit more about growing cucumbers that I could do,
but for now, I want to get you guys off on the right foot.
And if you have any questions, as always, drop in the Comments below.
Good luck in the garden and keep on growing.