How To Grow Cucumbers, Complete Growing Guide

What's going on growers? It's James Figgioni coming to you live from Jersey. Today, me and Tuck are going to show you how to easily grow cucumbers in your backyard. Let's go! Cucumbers are one of the best snacks to grab from the garden. There's nothing like going out there and grabbing a fresh cucumber right off the vine and then just crunching right into it. Me and Tuck just love it so much. One of the great things about cucumbers is that there are so many different varieties to grow. Everything from little lemon-shaped cucumbers to thin yard-long ones, there's even seedless varieties, there's disease-resistant varieties, and there's some varieties that only have female flowers. But to simplify things, we're going to break down our cucumbers into two different types. We've got slicing cucumbers, which are perfect for salads and fresh eating, and then we have pickling cucumbers, which are perfect for making pickles. If you like the shirt, you can grab one now at jamesfiggioni.com. It's a limited time thing though, so grab them while you still can. Let's get back to the cucumbers though. So when it comes to growing cucumbers, one of the most important things we have to take into account is that cucumbers are actually native to the tropics, which means they're extremely frost sensitive. So what we don't want to do is start our cucumbers too early. This is one of the biggest mistakes new gardeners make. When growing cucumbers, we can either directly sow them into the ground or we can start our seeds inside and then transplant them out. Personally, what I like to do is start my seeds inside and I do that for a number of reasons. The first reason is because if I take my cucumber seeds and I try to directly sow them into the ground, then they're not going to germinate unless the soil temperature is at least 50 degrees. And if the soil temperature is 68 degrees, they're still going to germinate really slowly. So basically those seeds won't come up until that soil temperature is like in the 60s. But if I start my seeds inside, I can get my seeds started even earlier and then I can transplant my stuff out and get earlier harvests too. Another reason that I love starting my cucumber seeds inside is to avoid extended exposure to the cucumber beetle when my plants are still young and at that super susceptible stage. So the cucumber beetle is going to be one of the biggest issues you have when it comes to growing cucumbers and I'm going to give you some more tips to avoid it as the video progresses. For new gardeners, deciding what to plant your seeds inside can be tricky and when it comes to planting cucumbers, the biggest issue is often planting them too early. For me, I know that cucumbers hate the cold weather, so I will never transplant out my cucumbers into the garden till at least three to four weeks after my last expected frost date. The thing is, I also don't want my cucumbers to be root bound either. So what I like to do is, I like to plant my cucumbers right around the time of my last expected frost date, which is April 19th. What this does is it gives me about four weeks until the cucumbers need to be transplanted into the garden. So I live in zone 7a and this is what works for me. If you live in a warmer region, you may be able to get your cucumbers out earlier, but the thing you do, should do and what I suggest is that you always put in your notes or in your journal exactly when you're planting your seeds inside and then you also put in your journal when you're transplanting them out. This way in the future you can reference that and then adjust your planting time based on your particular location. To start my cucumber seeds, I like using these large cells here and a good starting mix or a good soil. This is my favorite soil for starting seeds. This is the happy frog soil, stuff's really good. So I'll just fill up these large cells with the happy frog soil just like this. Make sure they're all pretty filled up. Then I'll just lightly press down on the soil and this soil is nice and damp already. Lightly press down the soil. Next, I'll take a something like a pan or just something like this. Make a little indentation in my location. I want these cucumber seeds about an inch into the soil. So we'll make our indentation just like that. Next, I'll grab some cucumbers. Here's a good variety that I love. This is suyolong, a really good one that I've grown through the years. So we'll just open this up and I'll usually plant about two seeds per cell. And after these come up, I'll usually thin back down to one. So we'll plant about two seeds in each one. Then I'll just cover this back up lightly. Put my variety on, my label, and then we'll just water this in. So it's really that simple. But even though we got this planted, we want to do a few particular things with them. So like I mentioned earlier, cucumber seeds will germinate based on the temperature of the soil. So if the temperature is about like 60 degrees, they'll take like 10 days to germinate. But if the temperature of the soil is like 80 to 90 degrees, it'll only take about three days to germinate. So what I like to do is after I get these planted, I'll bring this tray inside and I'll put a heating mat underneath it. What this does is it helps raise the temperature and helps speed up my germination. So it's really convenient. We don't want these nitrite temperatures to drop below 60 degrees after we plant our cucumbers or that will negatively affect the germination or they won't really germinate at all. So having the correct temperature will greatly speed up this whole process. After my cucumber seeds have germinated and popped, usually about three to 10 days, what I'll do is bring my plants out into the greenhouse and I'll let them grow in there until the time that they're ready to be transplanted out. But before I transplant them into the garden, I want to make sure that I'm hardening off my cucumber plants. Hardening off is essentially just getting your plants acclimated to those outside growing conditions before actually putting them out there. It's a big change from living in a greenhouse to living outside. So what I like to do is just slowly get them used to those temperatures. The first day I'll bring them out for a couple hours, then bring them in and then gradually give them more time outside. What we don't want to do though is bring our transplants outside to harden them off and then expose them to super cold temperatures because like I've said many times, the cucumbers hate cold temperatures. I got to take a break just for a minute. This guy is just so good over here. I love him so much. The garden boss and the leader of the channel and the leader of the garden. Tuck's always out here motivating me, encouraging me to grow more food so we can have more snacks. If you guys love seeing Tuck in the videos, hit the subscribe button and make sure you throw some hearts down there. Just spam hearts in the comments if you love seeing the boss in the videos. He always shows up at just the right time. He's such a good guy and he's really soaking in this nice sun. It's been kind of crappy the weather the last few days so he's out here now just absorbing all the sun that he can, just like us. After I know that all danger of frost has passed and my cucumbers are large enough, I'm ready to put them into the ground. And the ideal size for cucumbers to transplant out is when they have like their first true leaves, their first two true leaves. And what I do is, the night before transplanting, I'll make sure I water my plants in so the soil is nice and saturated when I go to transplant them out. And I'll also make sure before I put them in that I mix some good humus into my soil. So cucumber is like a good fertile soil with a lot organic matter. So I'll mix in some compost into my soil and also some cocoa coir just to help build up that organic matter and also add some fertility. What you want to do is when you're transplanting your cucumbers out is to make sure you're really gentle with the roots. So cucumbers are one of those plants that, you know, they can get a little finicky with transplanting. So make sure you take your time with them and you're really gentle with them. Another thing I like to do is to inoculate my plants with the mycorrhizal fungi when I'm transplanting. This helps with the transplant shock and also all other stages of growth. After the plants are all in and I like spacing my cucumbers about one foot apart, one from another. After they're all in, I'll just water them in and then we're on to the next stage. Cucumbers are a vine. So what I suggest you do to get the most out of them is to grow them up a fence or a trellis. What this will do is it'll help you save space. It'll increase the air circulation. It'll help with the overall life distribution and it's also going to make harvesting so much easier. So make sure that when you're growing your cucumbers, you at least have a fence or a trellis set up before you get them into the ground. Cucumbers are heavy feeders. So it's a good idea to go around your plants as they're growing and top dress with some compost just so they have good adequate nutrition. Another thing to think about is that cucumbers are actually 95% water. So we want to make sure they have adequate moisture as the plants are really growing. So what I like to do is I like to make sure that I have a nice mulch down around my cucumbers. Something like a straw mulch or a leaf mulch works excellent for this. Another thing we want to think about is we want to make sure we're watering our cucumber plants deeply when the weather really starts to get dry out. Because the cucumber plants, since they're 95% water, the cucumbers themselves, the plants will really stop producing, slow down, or they'll put out deformed or misshaped fruits that are really bitter when they don't have enough moisture. When it comes to harvesting cucumbers, you want to make sure you stay on top of picking them. And that is because the more you pick, the more you'll get. The reason for this is if we allow one cucumber on the vine to finish, then the whole vine will quit producing. So the focus of this cucumber plant is to make seeds so it can have offsprings for next year. So if we don't allow any of those cucumbers to finish, then the cucumber plant will just continually put out new flowers so that it can try to make more fruit to make seeds and then have the next offspring. So what we're kind of doing is like tricking the cucumber plant to continually producing new flowers by making sure we're staying on top of picking. That's super important. Another thing we want to make sure we're taking into account when harvesting is that we're not like super rough with the plants. What you don't want to do is just go out there, see the cucumber and just rip it off the vine. If you're going to harvest with your hands, then use one hand to hold the vine and the other hand to pull the cucumber away. Or you can go out there and just use scissors or something to cut the cucumbers right off the vines. We don't want to damage those vines when we're harvesting. Like I mentioned earlier, one of the big issues with growing cucumbers and one of the main issues I have is with the cucumber beetle. So I knew a few things to try to avoid this issue and try to deal with it. So the first thing I like to do is like I mentioned is I start my seeds inside. This way I can transplant them out and avoid some of the time where the cucumber beetle can actually get to my seeds. The second thing that I like to do is cover my crops with something like an insect netting. This protectant will make sure that the cucumber beetles can't actually even get to my plants, which is pretty good. So the third thing I'm doing is what I'm doing this year is I'm going to be growing some varieties that are actually used as trap crops. So this is the best one. This is known as the blue hubbard squash. So this is one of the plants that the cucumber beetles are drawn to. So I'll plant this around the outside of my garden and the idea is that the cucumber beetles all will go to that because they like this variety a lot better than my cucumbers. So it's like sending them to a different place. Another thing we can do is we grow some varieties that are, you know, that they're not as enticing for the cucumber beetles. So some of the burpless varieties, they lack that bitter gene and that's what actually draws in a lot of the cucumber beetles. That's today's video, guys. Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. Me and Tuck just had so much fun making this video today. It's like the perfect weather, the perfect day. He's out running, having fun. Look at him over there. Just exploring. These are the kind of days that we just, you know, try to hold on to and get the most out of. So we hope that you guys got a lot out of this video. We hope that we provide a lot of value and we hope that we encourage you maybe enough so you actually get some cucumbers planted into the ground. You don't have to have a huge garden to do it. You could just do it on like a patio or something. But I'm telling you, you get those fresh cucumbers, you bite into them, it's, the flavor is like, it's hard to explain how good it is. And the smell, I'm telling you, if you've never grown cucumbers yourself, just the smell will blow you away. I crack cucumbers like in the house when they're ready and I can smell them on the other side of the house. It's just the minerals that are all in it. It's so good for you and so good tasting. It's got that living water. Just amazing. So I want you guys to get those planted. There's so many great things that come from it. If you guys enjoyed the video though, hit the like button, hit the subscribe button, share with your friends. Don't forget to check out the merch down below. Again, that's limited time spring merch. So if you do like it, make sure you grab some before it goes. One thing I wanted to do before I let you go though, is I want to thank one of our new channel members, Lauren Clear. Thanks for being a part of Team Grow Lauren. It's like, it's just awesome that, that you're willing to support and contribute to it. And we hope that we're, you know, giving you back enough. Our goal is to give you back more, but we're just going to try to do our best for you. So if you guys do enjoy that video, make sure you hit the like button. Tuck's, look at him. He's over by the hazelnuts now, burying one of his toys. So we're just going to hang out here and get some more stuff done and just soak up the weather and just enjoy ourselves out here. It's such a blessing to be out here and it's such a blessing that you guys are out here with us. So Tuck and James, we'll catch you again real soon.