Do This NOW For ENDLESS Cucumbers: It's Like Magic!

What's growing on, gardeners? Cucumbers are one of the easiest and most difficult things you will ever grow. Grow them the right way and you will have more cucumbers than you know what to do with, but grow them wrong and you will get nothing. And on today's video, I'm going to show you why your cucumber production stinks and how to fix it. I have learned all of these lessons the hard way over the last decade, and if you follow the advice laid out in this video, be prepared for your cucumber production to explode. So let's get into it. Well, at least as soon as the storm passes, because I'm kind of trapped under my garden roof right now. The number one reason your cucumber production stinks is you are not picking your cucumbers often enough. Let me be crystal clear. Cucumbers are one of the fastest growing plants in our entire annual vegetable garden, maybe the fastest period. And if we do not pick them, they will not give us a harvest. The more cucumbers you pick off of these vines, the more cucumbers they are going to produce. And the absolute worst thing you can do with your cucumber plants is to allow them to load up with cucumbers that then get big and get mature. That will be the end of your cucumber plants. Let me show you what I'm talking about. For the first time ever, I am having a big problem with cucumber beetles in my garden. More on that later. But in an effort to control them, last night at 830, I sprayed all of my cucumber vines with a mixture of spinosad and surround WP kale and clay to try and kill the cucumber beetles and keep the new ones off. So I sprayed them less than 16 hours ago, yet look at this. I'm getting pristine new growth. Now, why does that happen? Well, that's because that is how incredibly fast cucumbers grow. So all of that growth right there is brand new. It grew that fast overnight. The vines put on many, many new inches. That is how aggressively fast they grow. Look, pristine new growth there. Pristine new growth under here. You can practically watch the cucumber vines grow. We've all seen it. Cucumbers that were absolutely perfect on one day, and then the next day they are the size of baseball bats. Zucchinis do the same thing. They practically blow up overnight, which makes sense because cucumbers are basically all water. So we must pick them as aggressively as possible because these cucumber vines are wasting incredible amounts of energy trying to ripen these crops on them. Actually, I'm not selling this enough. The real truth is even worse. The purpose of all plant life is to complete their biological cycle and reproduce, but cucumbers are real drama queens about it. They take it to the nth degree. In fact, if your cucumber vine produces one mature seeded cucumber, the entire vine will quit and die on you. If it produces one cucumber that is big and bloated and turning yellow and contains mature seed, it says, my work here is done. Guess it's time to die. If you let any of your cucumbers mature on any vine, that vine is toast, done. It'll quit on you. And the worst thing about it is, you know how hard it is to find cucumbers. We have to aggressively search these every single day and pick, pick, pick, pick, pick, because if we accidentally miss one and it turns yellow on us, that cucumber's toast. So what we need to do is exploit this biological process because it actually works in the opposite direction. If you let one cucumber mature on you, that vine will die. But if you overpick the cucumbers and take as many as you possibly can every single day, the vine reacts in the opposite way. It freaks out and it says, oh my goodness, we can't produce any mature seed. Something is harvesting all of our fruits. So it reacts by overproducing like a freak of nature. It will put as much energy into fruit production as possible. So where it'll work against you, if you don't pick any cucumbers, if you overpick, it will work in your favor and you'll get insane production. So go around every single day and pick the living daylights out of your cucumbers. Search high and low and be incredibly abusive about it. Pick the cucumbers when they are as small as possible. That will signal the cucumber plants to produce even more cucumbers. Sorry about the shaky cam, but it's tight in here. You see this cucumber right here? This one almost got away from me. I didn't see it. And as a result, it's starting to turn yellow and just about went mature on me. Had I let this go for another day, this was liable to kill my entire plant. By the way, if you're enjoying this video so far, please consider subscribing to the channel. YouTube has deprioritized long format content to promote shorts content more this year. So it's been really difficult for us long format creators to find new viewers. So if you like this kind of detailed analysis more than the doom scrolling and brain rot, subscribing to the channel really does a lot to help us produce these videos. Which brings me to point number two. Be very careful when planting your cucumbers. Make sure you give them enough space and if you're going to interplant them, do so with caution. You see, this year was a transition year for my garden. I built up a lot of my raised garden beds. I built a roof over my garden and everything had to be shimmied around. So I wasn't able to grow my cucumbers in isolation in containers like I like to for ease of management and harvest. Because my garden was in this transitional stage, I planted half a dozen cucumber and melon plants in front of my tomatoes. That way I could make use of my wire fence as a trellis for this season as kind of a simple solution. So I could grow them outside of their normal habitat, which I generally like to grow in grow bags because it gives me more control. And as a result, everything's been growing in like a jungle. So it's becoming really hard to get in here in between all of my tomato plants and locate the cucumbers and start picking them. In fact, it's downright nightmarish. I mean, it is really difficult to get in here, especially if you're trying to hold a camera. This is downright difficult. It's hard to find the fruits, which makes it more likely that I'm going to miss a few and then I'm going to let one go mature on me and I'm going to kill my plant. Plus it's just uncomfortable and humid in here. I mean, it looks really cool, but it is so difficult to manage. And here comes the rain again. It just makes it so hard to get to any of these cucumbers in here. So just be aware if you're going to interplant things and really jam them up, the harvesting process is going to be less than ideal. My goodness, is this rain coming down? I am completely trapped underneath my garden. These videos are not meticulously planned, folks. Sometimes whatever happens happens. This entire harvest of cucumbers right here is off of six lousy plants, and you can do this a couple of times a week if you pick aggressively enough. Why did I buy pickles at the grocery store yesterday? Help! I think I know what I'm doing this weekend. I'll be making pickles out of these. The third reason why your cucumber production stinks is you are growing old, manicious varieties of cucumbers. Manicious varieties of cucumbers are self-fertile, meaning you can produce cucumbers only growing one single plant that pollinates itself, but manicious varieties have separate male and female flowers. So pollen has to transfer from the male flower to the female flower in order to set that fruit and hold it to maturity. And we either need pollinators to do this for us, or we have to do it manually with a brush. Now, I don't grow manicious cucumbers anymore, so we'll have to use this melon vine as an example because melons are closely related to cucumbers. So this right here is a male flower. You know it's a male flower because it is a standalone flower. There is no baby fruit attached, and inside is the pollen that we need in order to pollinate the female flowers. So we would have to take the pollen from this male flower right here, and we would have to move that male pollen into this female flower right here. Now, you know this is a female flower because there is a little baby fruit attached to it. That's a little baby melon. So what we would need to do if we wanted to hand pollinate things manually is turn on some Barry White and then take our male pollen and then move it into the female flower. Or we could let the pollinators do it for us, but if you don't have a lot of pollinators, then the fruit is not going to get enough of your love, baby. And once pollination is complete, the fruit will hold and ripen until maturity. But we don't have to do these things this way anymore thanks to new advances in cucumber technology. We can grow varieties of cucumbers that are ganetius and parthenocarpic. Ganetius means they only produce female flowers, and parthenocarpic means the fruits will persist to maturity in absence of pollination. So all of the flowers that will form will only be female, and no pollination is necessary. So all of those flowers will hold and turn into mature fruits. So we can grow these without ever needing any insect pollination. We can grow them without having to hand pollinate. We can grow them indoors in greenhouses under insect netting, never have an issue with pests, and we will get virtually 100% pollination and fruit set. And that is what you see right here. This is a ganetius parthenocarpic variety called Party Time. It only makes female flowers. Here's one, here's one, here's one, here's one. They don't waste any energy on making male flowers, and they are all going to hold because they don't need pollination to hold. So you're going to get virtually 100% fruit set. All of this fruit is on one cucumber plant, one single cucumber vine. This is insane. So many fruits everywhere you look, all over the fence, and it sets fruit without pollination. So all of these cucumbers are going to set. Look at them all, all on one single plant. Is this not the most prolific thing you have ever seen? Just crazy. Look at them all. Now I say virtually 100% because adverse weather will affect them. For example, if it gets too cold at night, like it drops below 50, or it gets above 90, 95 degrees with disastrous humidity, you will have some of the flowers that will abort. So for example, this is a ganetius parthenocarpic variety, but it got so hot last week, we hit the mid-90s with disgusting humidity, and some of the flowers shriveled up on this one because it's more exposed to the elements. But underneath this greenhouse cover, this acts as a partial shade cloth. It blocks a lot of UV. So because a lot of the UV was blocked, I'm not seeing any of the flowers abort on any of the cucumbers grown under here. So you can use shade cloth and greenhouse covers and things like that to your advantage. See, none of these flowers are drying up. So keep that in mind. And by the way, this isn't GMO or anything like that. Parthenocarpy is a natural genetic trait. For example, all the figs we grow here in North America outside of California have a natural gene for parthenocarpy because we don't colonize the fig wasp in the United States outside of California. So there's no way that we can get these pollinated. So all of these have that natural trait. The cucumbers are no different. They are just good old-fashioned breeding at work. They simply take varieties that have this trait naturally, and they cross-pollinate them to guarantee that the offspring have that trait. So for that reason, the vast majority of them are going to be F1 hybrids, but there are some open pollinated and heirloom varieties that do have this trait as well. If you would like to try some of these ganetius parthenocarpic varieties, I put together a short list organized by plant type. For example, if you would like more traditional slicing varieties, you can try Didemer, Katrina, Merlin, and Socrates. If you would like a compact bush-style plant, try Gimlet, Isnik, Party Time, or Picolino. And for the pickling types, try Crispy Crunchy, Diamant, Excelsior, and H19 Little Leaf. Now, there are many more parthenocarpic ganetius varieties to choose from, with new varieties being developed every year. So this is just a short list, but it's a great list to get you started. I placed asterisks next to the varieties that I have grown personally, many of which I am growing right now. And for your convenience, I'll also place links to seeds for many of these varieties down in the video description. This is absolutely insane! It's taking me forever to do this video! The fourth reason why your cucumber production stinks is you are trying to keep the same tired vines alive all throughout the season. You see, a lot of gardeners make the mistake thinking that their cucumbers are like their tomatoes. They can stick them out after their last chance of frost, and they will produce all the way until their first fall frost like an indeterminate tomato will. But that is not the case. Cucumbers live fast and die hard. They germinate in only three to five days, they're ready for transplant two to three weeks after that, and they start producing their first fruits only a month after transplant. They are very rapid growers, and as a result, they have a very short life cycle, and they will not survive more than a couple of months. Remember I told you I was having an issue with cucumber beetles earlier in this video, and they were attacking my plants? That's why I had to spray them with the kaolin clay and the spinosad? Well, cucumber beetles spread diseases when they hop from plant to plant, so although all of these cucumbers look good right now, they are probably going to start showing signs of disease in about one to two weeks, and they're going to go into decline over the next two to four weeks. So in probably about a month, a lot of these cucumber vines are going to be in the dying process, if not completely dead. So the way we get around this and keep the harvest going all the way until frost is by succession planting our cucumbers. We need to start fresh cucumbers from seed every four to six weeks and plant them in a different spot in our garden, so when these vines start getting sick and going into decline, we can just pull them. And remember, even if our plants don't get attacked by insects, well, they are just going to naturally die back. We're going to miss a cucumber, and the vine is going to go into decline. We are going to get hit by powdery mildew or some other disease, and the vine is going to go into decline. No matter what we do, these vines are going to go into decline, and trying to keep the same ones productive all season long is futile. So that's why I always leave areas of my garden that are not planted in, that way I can keep planting in them. So I have that bed open, then in the back there, I have another bed that's open. There's a bed behind Bob Ross's head that has garlic in it. I'm going to pull that in the next couple of weeks, that bed is going to be open. So I always have different areas in my garden that I can stick a few additional vines. I also like to get creative, so I have my cucumber vines growing here, while I have some younger melon and cucumber vines that are behind over here. So I have them interplanted with my flowers as well, and so far the cucumber beetles haven't been able to find them because they're hidden. So don't be afraid to plant things in different locations. Heck, I even plant things up against my house. I have these indeterminate tomatoes and peppers that are growing in this bed right here, and I had all of these excess plants of peppers and tomatoes that I just dumped some compost here, and I'm growing right up against my house. And I have this big open area where I put some palm fronds down as weed mat. I may just dump a couple of bags of compost here, and let cucumbers or melons sprawl here for a subsequent planting. So get creative. Man, these plants got whooped in that storm. I have to fix that. And the fifth reason why your cucumber production stinks is you are not fertilizing them enough. Your cucumbers need to be fertilized every two weeks or twice a month, whatever is easier for you to remember. Remember that giant bushel of cucumbers I just picked? I'll be able to pick another one just like that in probably three to four days, and all of that energy has to come from somewhere. Yes, cucumbers do make plant food via photosynthesis, but they also have to get the vitamins and minerals and NPK that they need out of the soil. So they are sucking the life out of the soil, and we need to put those nutrients back. Now, I don't want to make this video a very detailed fertilizing video because that would take a long period of time. So if you want a detailed fertilizer video, I'll link to a video both above and down in the video description that will show you my routine. But if you want a summary, I recommend that every two weeks you go around to each plant and you give them one to two tablespoons of a mix of an organic all-purpose fertilizer, like a 5-5-5 granular, and also bone meal. So spread that around the base of each plant. Then once you put down that organic fertilizer, you need to wet it down. So I recommend you get yourself some Alaska fish fertilizer and some fertilizer like a Jax 20-20-20 or an organic water-soluble alternative that's very balanced, and then mix them in a watering can and wet down that organic fertilizer with the watering can. That will help facilitate the breakdown. The water-soluble fertilizers are immediately bioavailable by the plant, so they can start uptaking them right away, whereas the organic fertilizers are inert. They have to be broken down by the microbiome and the soil. So the day you put down that bone meal and the organic granulars, they don't do anything. That's why we have to put them down every two weeks, because we need some there in a constant state of decay over the course of the entire season. So if you stay on top of things and you give these plants all of the fertilizer that they need, they are going to produce like bonkers. But you need to remember, these plants are like us. They don't want to be starved for weeks at a time and then only fed once. They want to be fed on a schedule continuously and routinely so they have a stable source of food. When they feel that their food source is stable, they will produce more consistently. And that right there is how you will have more cucumbers than you know what to do with. Check your plants every single day. Pick and over-pick them early and often. Replace the plants as they age throughout the season and fertilize them. And you will have an amazing crop. The next question you may have is, what do I do with this avalanche of cucumbers? Well, my favorite thing to do is to pickle them. I'll link to a video both above and down in the video description that will show you how to do that. Just be careful and don't make them too spicy like I did that one time. So everybody, I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, please make sure to hit the like button, subscribe to the channel, and please ring the notification bell so you're notified when I release more videos like these. For everything I use in my yard and garden to grow cucumbers, I place direct links down in the video description. I also place links to my favorite seeds down there for your convenience. For everything else I use in my yard and garden in real life to grow everything, that is down in my Amazon storefront in the video description. And while you're down there, check out my website, The Millennial Gardener, for all things gardening and custom home design merch if you want to support my channel. Thank you all so much for watching, and I hope to see all of you again on the next video. And now, I finally have to get out of the rain. Dale, you lazy bum. The bunny was in the back. The bunny just ran under the shed. What am I paying you for? You're not doing anything. Dale, get off your coffee break. The bunny was in the back. Do you want to go look for the bunny? Dale, the bunny is in the back and he's eating all of the weeds, which is actually a good thing. Do you want to go look for the bunny? Oh, you lazy bum. It's too hot for Dale. He's taking his long coffee break again, Brittany.