Cucumber Grow Along Everything You'll Need

Our cucumber grow along wants to be started at the beginning of April, however if you are in a colder area than me then you are looking at growing these around four weeks before your last frost. What we want to do is make sure that these heat loving plants are started in a warm environment rather than struggle to get going in a colder environment. Cucumbers often come in two different varieties in the UK that will be greenhouse varieties that are often grown up strings or a ridge variety that is grown outside and has a tougher and bumpier skin than those greenhouse varieties. Over the years as our cucumbers have changed we also have all female varieties. So our typical greenhouse varieties will have a male and a female flower and they will need to be pollinated. In greenhouses traditionally this was a little bit more difficult because you don't have as many pollinators as you do outside so that's when they brought in the female varieties. Although some of them will still find that they have some males that need to be removed and you do need to check on the packet of seeds that you have to see whether or not those male flowers are going to need to be removed and if you are up north then you may find that these do much better in a really sheltered position or an inside position rather than outdoors. All cucumbers really do enjoy the heat and if they're cold they're going to start to salt so we don't want to start these too early or in a time when we're having a really cold period in a greenhouse but we can start them around four weeks before our last frost in the house if we are having colder springs like we did last year. Because we are looking at starting these cucumbers in the house that little bit later you should be absolutely fine without any grow lights and the temperature within your house should also be adequate in order to get these started. Really our light levels are something that we need to be concerned about before mid-February if you've got a south facing window and then from then we usually have enough light in order to start seeds inside. By the time these are started it'll be plenty lighten up. The variety that we're going to be looking at growing within this grow along is a variety called Tamra which is a slicing cucumber and this one can be grown both inside and you'll get a larger production from an inside growing in a polytunnel or a greenhouse but it can also be grown outside as well. This is a traditional variety and it is an open pollinated variety so we will be able to save seeds from this one hopefully and give us plenty of seeds for following seasons as well. We'll be starting our seeds in a standard pot. It doesn't matter if they're not as deep as this one and we'll be starting two seeds per pot then we can either thin them down but if you do want both of the plants then we can very gently separate them and pop the other one on as well. Most years I find that we don't really need to pop them on but if it is colder in the spring then we will want to be moving them on into a slightly larger pot. If you're growing more than one variety of cucumber then you may want to make sure that they are isolated in order to save the seeds but otherwise there shouldn't usually be any cross-pollination issues and then if you are growing cucumbers and gherkins then you are going to want to keep them separate because one can cause the other to go very bitter. The other thing we are going to want to do is make sure that these are in a well-fed bed and that also they are watered regularly and well because that's going to make a difference to whether or not these cucumbers are bitter and whether they thrive as well. For our pot growing varieties we want as big as a pot as you can possibly manage to get really for these so about an 18 inch pot would be absolutely great but they are thirsty so in pots we don't want them to dry out so the larger you can manage the more beneficial that's going to be. You can also get our bush varieties which may be a bit easier to grow in pots but you can grow any of the types in pots anyway and that shouldn't be a problem. And then for our plants that are planted outside we're looking at around 12 or 18 inches between each plant that's really going to depend on whether or not we are going to be taking off the side shoots or whether we're going to be allowing more than one of these side shoots to mature. If we've got them in pots that's usually a little bit easier to allow more of the side shoots to continue because they'll have more space usually between each of the pots and therefore above. To grow them in a polytunnel or undercover it is usual practice that we are going to remove those side shoots in order just to have one main stem that grows up but that will depend. Cucumbers can also find that their season can be reasonably short or the plant maybe doesn't do as well later on so one of the things that we can also do is successively sow them and either make an area where you're going to plant them elsewhere or just pop a seed in or a seedling beside the current plant and then allow that one to mature and then as it does mature we can cut down the original plant. They're going to do best in full sun and in a sheltered position so as I said really undercover if you've got that space but otherwise in a corner of the garden or the allotment that doesn't get too much wind or too much shade you'll really benefit these plants.