7 Proven Tips to Maximize your Cucumber Harvest!

what's up everybody Justin at SNK greenhouse and today I'm giving you seven tips to boost the production of your cucumber plants let's jump in each tip I give you in this video is very important but the last one is absolutely crucial and probably the most important one so make sure to watch all the way through tip number one is to apply mulch now this seems pretty insignificant but it's pretty important because cucumbers are pretty much a fair weather PL they don't like it too cold they don't like it too hot so we're here in the middle of June now it's starting to heat up and we don't want the sun to bake the soil against the roots here mulch will add a layer of protection and kind of regulate the heat stress that cucumbers go through in the summertime mulch also is a very very good way to hold in moisture so your cucumbers don't dry out and third mulch is going to help suppress those weeds so you're they're not competing with your cucumbers now what am I applying right here well this is a shredded um weed-free mulch from healthy straw pretty fond of it actually cuz well it's so easy to put out again it's shredded so it just kind of naturally is easy to use but you don't have to use shredded um straw I might have said mulch but I meant straw ra um you can use shredded hardwood you can use pine bark nuggets you can use leaf mold if you just want to get something that's read readily available in your yard but some type of covering to protect those [Music] roots tip number two is to plant cucumbers that are parthenocarpic now I know that's a crazy word but all that means is they're self-pollinating or they don't rely on bees and insects to actually pollinate them now I really really try to drive the bees to my garden because so many plants do rely on pollinators and that's why I plant things like these beautiful sunflowers because well not only are they aesthetic but they actually have a purpose come right here look there's actually a bee flying into this flower check him out now he he is on one of my squash which is part of the cucurbit family which is part of the same family as cucumbers and this is a great point because he is actually on a male flower and you know it's a male flower because it's coming out of the stem oh actually he's on a female flower okay we know it's a female flower because he was crawling around on this baby squash and he just pollinated it wow we got to see that in action this is a female flower this is a male flower that's not open we know this is a male flower because it's coming out of the stem for this little baby squash to get pollinated he must go into this male flour and then then go into the female flower and that will pollinate it and help this grow now if you ever see baby squash zucchini or cucumbers just rot and fall right off well that's because it didn't get pollinated now this drives my point home you don't have to worry about any of this if you plant cucumbers that are parth aaric like the pickle bushel cucumbers I have growing in this bed now another Vantage of growing parthan a caric uh cucumbers is that you can grow them in enclosed areas like a greenhouse and that's why they're able to produce and produce and produce and not have any bees or insects in there tip number three is to make sure your cucumbers are get consistent watering now I'm old school I'm still pulling the hose I don't have drip irrigation although drip irrigation is great um but today I'm going to show you how I water with a hose cuz it's pretty crucial here we are uh in the early morning I like to water in the mornings or if I can't do it in the morning I like to do it late in the afternoon that way that water don't get just evaporated by the hot sun but you want to in these beds I'm actually watering a about every single day because my soil is very fast draining if I was growing uh in the ground I might not water every day but I I know my beds and and these cucumbers need it about every single day now I'm watering down here at the base and not from overhead that's going to that can cause disease because when these whe leaves get wet it just ignites those fungus spores and that's why sometimes you see your cucumbers not last as long as they should so each morning I pretty much give my cucumbers a good soak again down here at the base and look at that mulz it's just holding in all the water it'll hold it out throughout the day if you ever you'll know your cucumbers aren't getting enough water if they start to taste bitter or you know when you pull those cucumbers and they're a little bit misshaping that's also usually a lack of water tip number four is to plant your cucumbers in succession now all that means is you're going to plant more cucumbers behind your mature ones because although we wish we could get our cucumbers to last all through the summer into fall you know like an indeterminate tomato we wish we could just keep growing and growing it but the truth is squash zucchini cucumbers they all have a pretty short life cycle and no matter what you do how good care of care you take care of them they're not going to last in indefinitely through the whole growing season so what I like to do these seeds are coated so you can see them thought it'd be be good for the demonstration here all I have is a six Cale pack with some poton soil in it and I'm just going to put these have a really good germination rate so I'm just going to put one per sale and then I'm going to push them down and water them in and I will have new baby cucumbers to plant Behind These in just a couple weeks now I'm going to show you a container I did just about a week or 10 days ago look at that that has already came up just from about a week ago and you can see these cucumber plants have two leaves on them typically when a cucumber plant has three leaves on them this will be producing another Leaf soon that means they're pretty much ready to transport plant tip number five is to make sure your cucumber plants have something to climb on like this cattle panel or you can use a tomato cage or you can use a wooden tomato steak just something to get them off of the ground because when they're on the ground well they tend to not get a lot of air circulation and that lack of air circulation is going to cause disease when you get them up off of the ground air can move in between these leaves and you're going to have less diseases like blight now it also kind of makes everything nice and neat and allows you to plant your cucumbers close together so you can grow more cucumbers in your space you see I got these planted just about 8 in apart every about every 8 Ines I have a cucumber plant through here so I've got like over a dozen cucumbers in this little 12T section and I also want to mention that cucumbers have tendrils and the this is a tendril you want to zoom in on that and these little tendrils will naturally latch on to whatever You' got um for it to climb on this tendril here naturally just latched onto the cattle panel I didn't have to twist it on there or tie it on there and as long as you give your cucumber plants a nice start you know give them a Direct General sense of direction of where you want them to climb they'll pretty much latch on and take care of themselves tip number six is to make sure you're feeding your cucumbers espe especially during the blooming stage now in the beginning they're going to like a lot of nitrogen to get those leaves going and growing but when they're starting to bloom they need more potassium and phosphorus and I've got two good examples of a fertilizer product that will provide that we have tomato tone by espoma and garden tone by espoma and if you look at the breakdown on this Garden tone you'll see the three main numbers we've got a 3 44 that's nitrogen phosphorus and pot potassium and you see those last two numbers a little a little higher than the nitrogen count that's going to be perfect for the Cucumbers uh on this tomato tone even though it's tomato tone you can use it on other vegetables U this is going to have more uh nutrients like calcium in it but we got nitrogen three phosphorus and then potassium a four and a six so it's got plenty plenty of pottassium that's going to work out really good for these cucumbers they are in that stage right now they probably need a lot of food especially if you're going to be planting them in succession you're going to want to add some food because that soil even if you assuming you planted it in nice rich compost it is going to get depleted of nutrients over time this is a granular fertilizer and I just like to sprinkle it out around the base of my plants here no I'm I'm not going to measure it out I'm probably going to get roasted in the comments but I've I've used this so much I kind of know what they're going to need plus I don't worry about it burning because well this is an organic fertilizer now if you're the type that needs to have the exact measurement it's on the bag so you can kind of measure it [Music] out tip number seven and I told you it was the most important tip and it really is to harvest your cucumbers now I know you're like what of course I'm going to harvest them that's why I grew them but if you leave a cucumber on too long kind of like I did this one see how this cucumbers this is a pickling cucumber and it is large you see how it's starting to turn yellow well this one was left on there a little bit too long you want to pick your cucumbers when they're pickling when they're about that size the reason this one didn't get picked and this happens so many times is because cucumbers produce a pretty dense vegetation and sometimes they'll be hiding behind the leaves and you just miss seeeing them but what this actually does is it signals to the plant that it's at the end of its life cycle it's kind of done its part um in in Mother Nature it thinks it's you know kind of going to be reproducing and it's left its basically seed to go on to the next generation of cucumber plants what are you talking about I don't know if that makes any sense at all but let's just trust me on this you need to pick your cucumbers or your plant is going to [Music] die well folks there you go there are my seven tips to boost your cucumber production follow these and you'll have plenty of cucumbers this summer for those salads and for those sandwiches if you want to see more content like this make sure to hit that subscribe button and notification Bell that way you get notified and until next time become a plant person [Music]

Channel: S&K Greenhouse

Views: 29,635

Keywords: how to grow cucumbers, how to get cucumbers to produce more, how to grow cucumber plants, cucumber growing tips, vegetable gardening, raised bed gardening, growing cucumbers in raised beds

Id: 7Xdm3DQDOuU

Length: 12min 30sec (750 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 24 2024