Cucumbers are a staple vegetable in the summer garden. They are very easy to grow and produce a prolific yield. Homegrown cucumbers taste so much fresher and nicer than store bought ones. I hope that with the help of the information in this guide, you’ll be able to grow some of your own successfully this season.
Cucumbers are very versatile in different dishes. They don’t have a lot of flavour in themselves, but are great paired with condiments such as vinegar and black cracked pepper, which really brings out their taste. Cucumber makes a great addition to salads (in particular, I really love Greek salad) and sandwiches (cucumbers go nicely with tomatoes). You can also try making cucumber soup which is served cold and is delicious on a hot summer’s day. Traditionally, cucumbers can be planted outside in New Zealand by Labour Weekend, which is a long weekend with a public holiday falling on the Monday after the weekend (like a Bank Holiday in England). Labour Weekend usually falls towards the end of October. This year, Labour Weekend starts on 21 October. While it’s natural to want a head start on the season, my advice is to not be in a rush to plant out seedlings. There is often a dramatic difference between day and night time temperatures at this time of the year and the weather can still be quite temperamental. Young seedlings are particularly tender. Once they’ve been hit by a sudden cold snap or exposed to consistently low temperatures, they never really recover. It’s therefore a good idea to wait until the beginning of November to plant cucumber seedlings into your garden, when temperatures are warmer. This way, the seedlings you plant out will be a bit more established and strong enough to survive any setbacks along the way. In saying that, it does depend on where you live. New Zealand’s climate varies dramatically from region to region and I do have to remember that not all of my audience lives in Auckland or even New Zealand for that matter. My personal gardening experiences are limited to our urban homestead in the Auckland region, so please take this into account when considering my advice. On the same token, what grows well in my environment may not necessarily thrive in your own microclimate. So please don’t blame me if things go wrong and varieties I’ve recommended don’t grow well in your garden! Sowing cucumbers from seed It’s much too early to think about planting cucumbers outdoors. It’s still way too cold! However, I wanted to write a guide to growing cucumbers now because you can start sowing cucumbers under cover from seed. It’s really easy to grow cucumbers from seed and it allows you to grow unusual varieties which aren’t found in garden centres. It takes about six to eight weeks from the time of the germination of a cucumber seed to produce a plant that is large enough to transplant outside. Cucumber can be started from seed indoors in October or even earlier if you live in a more temperate zone and have a hot house to protect them from the cold. Cucumber seeds need warmth in order to germinate. I germinate seeds in punnets or egg cartons filled with seed raising mix from Gardn Gro. I like Gardn Gro’s seed raising mix as it is very fine in texture, enabling seeds to push through the mixture easily as they rise to the surface. I place the punnets and egg cartons inside plastic incubators which you can purchase from garden centres. I then place the incubators on a heat pad indoors and spray plants with water once daily or twice if the seed raising mixture is very dry. If you don’t have a heat pad you can also use your hot water cupboard which will also provide seedlings with a warm environment so they can germinate successfully. How to care for cucumber seedlings For new gardeners, those who don’t wish to start their cucumber seedlings from seed or if you’ve simply left it too late, plants are available for sale in nurseries from October onwards. Palmers stock a great range of cucumber seedlings. Awapunialso sell high quality, large grade cucumber seedlings delivered direct to your door. If you order 7 or more bundles of seedlings, delivery is free. I plan to sell a variety of different cucumber seedlings in my own boutique nursery later in the season. Keep an eye out for details in my newsletter, on Neighbourly and my Facebook page as to when they become available. During October and November, I will also circulate updated lists of available stock in my plant nursery to subscribers of my free weekly gardening newsletter. To be added to my mailing list and receive these notifications, please email me at anitakundu.nz@gmail.com. I’ll probably be selling seedlings a bit later than stores because I’m merely a home gardener, germinating and caring for seedlings in our patio at home without the help of the horticultural technology that you would expect to find in a commercial operation. Without a hot house, I simply don’t have a head start on the season like large-scale nurseries. To compensate for this, I do try and offer seedling varieties which are unusual and can’t be found in garden centres or online retailers. This is a good thing as it enables me to collaborate with other businesses in the industry and promote their brands. You can achieve a lot by working with other people in the same field (no pun intended), as opposed to simply trying to compete with them. To read my further thoughts on this issue, please click here. Whoever you decide to buy plants from, take care to keep plants undercover until early October as cucumbers are frost sensitive. The weather can be temperamental in spring and the nights are often still quite cool. From then on, start “hardening them off”. This is the process of exposing plants to the outdoors incrementally, for example, for two hours in the middle of the day for the first week, increasing to four hours per day for the next week. Continue to bring the plants indoors at night. By the third week of October, it should be safe to leave plants outdoors overnight. Cucumber varieties If you’re planning to grow cucumber from seed, you’ll find that they come in an impressive array of shapes, colours and sizes. There are so many different varieties of cucumber seeds on the market that like me, you’ll have trouble deciding which varieties to grow. Traditionally, cucumbers are long and dark green. There are a few different varieties on the market in New Zealand. This season I’m growing the cucumber Beth Alpha (Franchi Seeds). I’m also growing the cucumber Lebanese Paska F1 (Egmont Seeds). Other standard long green cucumber varieties include Green Slicer F1 (Egmont Seeds), Lebanese F1 (Egmont Seeds), Marketer (Egmont Seeds), Socrates F1 (Egmont Seeds), Spacemaster (Egmont Seeds), Tasty Green F1 (Egmont Seeds), Telegraph Bella F1 (Egmont Seeds), Telegraph Louisa F1 (Egmont Seeds) and Telegraph Tanja (Egmont Seeds). Miniature cucumbers can be incredibly prolific and are a lovely addition to lunchboxes in the summer. Last season I grew the Lebanese-style cucumber Iznik Mini F1 (Egmont Seeds). We simply couldn’t stop harvesting cucumbers from our two plants, even well into April. Iznik is definitely high on my list of varieties to grow this season. I’m also looking forward to growing the miniature cucumber Patio Snacker (Egmont Seeds) for the first time. It is also possible to grow white cucumbers. The most common type is apple cucumbers, such as Crystal Apple (Egmont Seeds) and White Wonder (Egmont Seeds). We have always found that apple cucumbers are extremely prolific and make a delicious addition to sandwiches and salads in summer. To order seeds from the very extensive Egmont Seeds range, visit http://www.egmontseeds.co.nz/. To find stockists for Franchi Seeds or to order Franchi seeds directly from the New Zealand distributor Italian Seeds Pronto owned by Gillian Hurley-Gordon, visit http://www.italianseedspronto.co.nz/. How to care for cucumber plants Cucumbers need at least 6 hours of sunshine per day, so be sure to plant seedlings in the sunniest spot in your garden. Before planting cucumber seedlings, take the time to prepare the bed properly so plants receive adequate nutrition. Dig the area over that you wish to plant your seedlings in. Mix plenty of compost and some sheep pellets into the ground. I highly recommend Gardn Gro’s Wonder Nuggets, which are 100% organic and function as an excellent fertiliser. Rake the ground so that it is nice and level. Add some tomato fertiliser to each plant’s hole at the time of planting, to give plants a strong start to life. Be sure to water plants every day, preferably early in the morning or in the evening. In November and December, plants are in their most active growing phase. Try not to get too much water on the leaves, otherwise your plants may develop powdery mildew. Liquid feed cucumbers weekly to encourage the growth of healthy leaves and the formation of flowers, which will develop into fruit after they have been pollinated. Pollination of cucumbers Cucumbers need to be pollinated in order to develop fruit. As the flowers on cucumber plants are reasonably large (though not as large as pumpkin and zucchini), you’ll find that bees will do all the work for you. Personally, I wouldn’t bother going to the effort of pollinating them by hand, unlike melons which benefit from hand-pollination, which I covered in a previous blog post. Harvesting your cucumbers It can take what seems like forever for your first cucumber to be ready for picking but be patient! In early summer, it will usually be cooler so it might take awhile for them to grow to full size. You can pick cucumbers at any stage. I prefer to pick them when they are smaller because they are sweeter and you can stay on top of your harvest, which can sometimes get out of control. Got a glut of cucumbers that you can’t get through all at once? Cucumbers can be stored in the fridge for up to 2 weeks prior to consumption, or you can do what we do and give them away to family, friends and neighbours.
1 Comment
Lewis
1/15/2023 10:50:55 am
When is the latest you'd be able to sow a cucumber seed (in Auckland) and expect to get a harvest?
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