Cucumbers are best picked green, firm, and moderate in size–as soon as they are edible and usable size. Home-grown cucumbers should be picked slightly smaller than the size you’d find at the market. Smaller cucumbers will be just as tasty as larger cucumbers. Never allow cucumbers to mature on the plant. If cucumber fruits mature…
Search Results for: cucumber harvest
How to Harvest and Store Cucumbers
When to Harvest Cucumbers • Harvest slicing cucumbers when bright, green, and firm and 6 to 8 inches (15-20 cm) long. Harvest pickling cucumbers when 2 to 4 inches long–6 to 7 inches long for big pickles. • Harvest lemon cucumbers just before they turn fully yellow. A yellow lemon cucumber will be seedy. •…
Cucumber Seed Starting Tips
Cucumbers are a tender, warm-weather crop. Start cucumbers indoors 6 to 3 weeks before you plan to transplant them into the garden or direct sow seed in the garden 2 to 3 weeks after all danger of frost is past and the soil has warmed. Support cucumbers on a trellises, poles, or cages or plant…
Cucumber Beetle Natural Insect Pest Control
The cucumber beetle is an oblong greenish-yellow beetle with black spots or stripes on its wing covers. The cucumber beetle is about ¼ inch long. Cucumber beetles feed mainly on members of the cucurbit family—cucumbers, melons, and squashes—and also asparagus, early beans, corn, eggplant, peas, potatoes, and tomatoes. They attack seedlings feeding on young shoots…
How to Make Cold, Tasty Cucumber Soup
Cucumber soup is a delicious summer soup served chilled. It’s cooling, light, and quiet. There is a simple way to make cucumber soup, here it is: whirl two peeled medium cucumbers and an 7- or 8-ounce container of plain yogurt in the blender until smooth; add salt and pepper to taste; chill until cold and…
Melon, Squash, and Cucumber Growing Success Tips
Melons, squash, and cucumbers grow best where the summer is hot, dry, and almost always sunny. The best flavored of these gourd family (Cucurbitaceae) crops will come from the hottest growing regions. Both cloudy and rainy weather will slow and all but stop Cucurbit growth. Heat Requirements Melons, squash, and cucumbers grow best when both…
Summer Vegetable Harvest Tips
Pick summer vegetables when they are young and tender—bigger is not tastier. Check crops daily. Whenever possible eat summer vegetables the day you pick them. Here’s a quick guide for picking summer vegetables at the peak of flavor: Green beans. Pick green beans as soon as immature seeds begin to fill the pod but before…
Sliced Cucumber Flavor Matches
Cucumbers are sweet except when they are a tad bitter. Choose cucumbers for their sweetness and refreshing cleanness or for their green grassy astringency and crispness. Sometimes you don’t know which cucumber you will get until you bring it in from the garden and taste it. Always cucumbers are cooling and refreshing—they are, after all,…
Cucumber Beetle and Corn Rootworm Controls
Cucumber beetles—spotted and striped—eat a variety of crops, not just cucumbers. Cucumbers, corn, lima and snap beans, melons, peas, pumpkins, potatoes, sweet potatoes, peanuts, eggplant, tomatoes, summer and winter squash—cucumber beetles feed on more than 280 plants. They feed on leaves and flowers and tunnel into fruit; early in the season they eat young seedlings….
How to Grow Cucumbers That Are Not Bitter Tasting
Cucumbers plants that are stressed during the growing season may produce fruit that is bitter flavored. Commonly a lack of water or temperatures too cold or too hot cause cucumbers to bear bitter tasting fruit. But some cucumbers may have a slightly bitter flavor by nature. Cucumbers contain organic compounds called cucurbitacins that can cause…