Because the climate heats up, now’s the proper time to develop and choose cucumbers! With these simple suggestions and tips, you’ll be ready to efficiently harvest and retailer the cucumbers you develop till they’re able to eat.
Except in any other case famous, all images copyright © 2017 by Andrew Mefferd.
The next is an excerpt from The Greenhouse and Hoophouse Grower’s Handbook by Andrew Mefferd. It has been tailored for the net.
The Resilient Cucumber
Cucumbers are a really fast-growing crop. When grown rapidly at excessive temperatures, they will take as little as twenty-one days to go from seed to transplant stage, and one other twenty-one days to go from transplant to first harvest. Below sizzling circumstances, mature crops can develop 4 inches (10 cm) or extra in a day. So long as they’re stored properly watered, cucumbers crops can tolerate hotter temperatures than tomatoes.
The quick progress fee means cucumbers might require extra frequent consideration than the opposite vining/fruiting crops. During times of quick progress, cukes may have pruning or trellising greater than as soon as every week. Small-fruited varieties like cocktail cucumbers might should be picked as soon as a day or extra to maintain them from getting too massive.
Harvesting Cucumbers

Determine 10.8. A pickling cucumber being grown by the high- wire (single-leader) technique within the writer’s hoophouse.
Frequency of harvest in cucumbers is decided each by selection and by how briskly the crops are rising. The purpose of cucumber harvest is to choose the cucumbers as soon as they’ve reached a minimal dimension and diploma of maturity, earlier than they’ve turn out to be overmature. There may be some latitude in when to choose cucumbers, since they’re picked when horticulturally mature, not botanically mature (in different phrases, ripe).
Contemplate the distinction between selecting a ripe tomato or pepper (pores and skin has modified colour, seeds are mature) and selecting a cucumber (based mostly on dimension, not ripeness; seeds shouldn’t be mature if current in any respect). In greenhouse cukes, the matter will be confused, since they’re parthe-nocarpic and gynoecious and don’t set seed. However we are able to nonetheless say that overmaturity corresponds to the stage of maturity in a cucumber when it could in any other case have onerous seed. This definition nonetheless permits for some latitude in when to reap.
A selected selection could also be harvested barely bigger or smaller, as soon as it has reached horticultural maturity, based mostly on grower desire, purchaser desire, and stage of progress. Cucumber crops in a extra generative stage will have a tendency to provide longer, bigger fruits.
Cucumber Maturity
Overmaturity in cucumbers corresponds to bloating. It is because cucumbers develop to a sure size earlier than doing most of their diameter enlargement. So an overmature cucumber is one which has reached its closing size and elevated an excessive amount of in diameter. You wish to choose cucumbers on the desired size, earlier than they’ve begun bloating, as a result of taste will begin taking place at that time.
Since protected tradition cucumbers are seedless, overmaturity isn’t as a lot of an issue as in subject cucumbers, the place cukes will start to have onerous seed when picked overmature. However one of the best consuming high quality in cucumbers comes after the cuke has stuffed out and reached its optimum size, and earlier than it has began to bloat.
If you’re rising a brand new selection and are uncertain the place the candy spot of maturity is, undermature cukes are likely to look barely angular as a result of they haven’t stuffed out fully but, like an underinflated balloon. And an overmature cuke could have stopped rising in size and began increasing outward solely. Most cukes are on the proper diameter once they now not have pointy ends and are cylindrical, however earlier than their form has begun to inflate. Finally, there’s some discretion in when to choose cucumbers, so present employees examples of what you need them to choose and never choose.
Publish-Harvest: Storing Cucumbers
It’s essential to get cucumbers out of the solar as quickly as attainable, since their darkish pores and skin absorbs quite a lot of warmth the longer they’re disregarded. Retailer cucumbers at 55 to 57°F (13–14°C), and at 95 % humidity.
So long as they’re held below perfect post-harvest circumstances for just a few days till sale, you’ll be able to retail lengthy European cucumbers or put them in a CSA field with out shrink-wrapping. For a produce gross sales chain for much longer than that, or wholesaling the place dealing with is out of your management, shrink-wrapping needs to be used.
Cucumber Wrapping and Packaging

Determine 10.10. A younger crop of lengthy European greenhouse cucumbers grown umbrella-style. The crops have simply reached the highest wire, which is 6 to 7 toes (1.8–2.1 m) excessive, and are quickly to be topped to let the laterals develop.
On a really small scale, stretchy plastic wrap could also be used to wrap the cukes, with the ends twisted to seal in moisture. On a medium scale, machines can be found that can velocity up the method. The only of those will be loaded with a big roll of plastic wrap, with a sizzling wire to chop it. An individual stands in entrance of the machine and wraps every cucumber, and once they carry the wrapped cucumber the recent wire cuts the plastic.
On a bigger scale, cucumbers are put right into a unfastened tube of plastic wrap after which despatched on a conveyor belt via a heater, which shrinks the wrap to suit the cucumber. These have a really excessive output and are rather more costly than the opposite choices.
Most American slicer and pickling sorts don’t want shrink-wrapping, as a result of their skins are thick sufficient to forestall dehydration. A lot of the mini/midi/cocktail thin-skinned cucumbers can profit from some kind of dehydration safety, similar to lengthy Europeans.
This packaging might also be helpful to maintain the cucumbers collectively in a marketable unit, because the smaller sorts are often offered in teams relatively than by the piece or the pound. Shrink-wrapping cocktail or snack cucumbers to a small cardboard tray is a standard business technique that additionally has good presentation. Bagging small-fruited cukes on the market could also be a extra sensible choice for smaller growers. The downside is that generally the bag can fog up, making the cucumbers onerous to see.
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