Believe it or not, cucumbers were the first plant I
ever grew when I started gardening. My brother and I, we
went down to the nursery. We just wanted to do something
to get out of the house. I was playing video games a lot back
then and just needed something to kind of reset myself. And we went to the nursery, he bought a couple big things
of basil, very smart choice, and I designed a hydroponic system
and planted cucumbers in it. And let me just tell you, they were the most disgusting cucumbers
I've ever bit into in my life. And I should have quit gardening at
that point in time. But I didn't. And here we are and now
we're looking at a beautiful, beautiful Marketmore 76
cucumber grown in a grow bag. And that's what we're talking
about in today's video. Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening
where it's my goal to help you grow a greener thumb and avoid the disgusting
cucumbers that I created early on in my gardening life. So we're going to go over seven different
categories of care and consideration for the cucumber. And because I made some Epic alliteration
right there please cultivate the Like button for Epic cucumber harvests.
And let's get into the video. Tip number one is considering
the type and variety, right? These are two things that go hat in
hand and I really am starting to say to myself, and also as I put
material out about gardening, the variety selection is so,
so important. Because you just, it's a mistake that if you make it, you now have to grow your mistake
out for the whole season. Okay? So when it comes to a cucumber, you
have two main growth habit types. You have your bushing types
and your vining types. Now cucumbers naturally
are vining climbing plants. They actually have tendrils that
they put out to attach to structure. And in fact, the one that I just touched has attached
itself to the stem of another cucumber leaf. So there's a little
climbing-ception going on right there. But that's the natural type. Breeders have created a lot of different
bushy style varieties for us container or small space gardeners because maybe
we don't have six feet of trellis to put it up. Maybe we do want
a more compact variety. One that I grew that was a bushing
type last year was Iznik F1. F1 means it's a hybrid plant so it's been bred
for specific traits and the bushing trait was one of those. So it
was a really nice one. I grew it in a five gallon
bucket. It was absolutely amazing! Now you also have the variety
as far as flavor and use. So you have your slicing
cucumbers, long thin. The Marketmore 76 is a
slicing cucumber right here. And then you also have your
pickling cucumbers, right? Those ones are a little shorter,
the flesh is a little bit drier. It's bred to kind of accept that brine
and really create that nice pickle that we know and love. So you need to choose the growth habit
type and you also need to choose the specific flavor or the specific use case
you're going to grow that cucumber for. If you want a funky pick, I'll always
leave you guys with some varieties. You have lemon cucumbers. They're globular
spherical ones, as the name implies, kind of like a light cream yellow.
Very prolific, very easy to grow. I found the flavor wasn't quite there
for me. So while it looked cool, I wanted something that was just a classic
tasty cucumber cause I do love to eat them. Then you've got Marketmore 76.
This is the one that I have right here. This is a very, very, very popular
one. You can find it almost everywhere. It has a lot of good qualities as
far as its growth and its flavor. And then anything with
the word bush in it, if you're going for a more
compact variety - pickle bush, Bushmaster I think is one.
Spacemaster is another good one. So these are all ones that you can do
if you really are trying to go in a compact space. Tips two and
three, soil and watering. It really wants a nice rich soil
because it's a heavy feeder, it's putting out a lot
of vegetative growth. It's putting out a lot of fruits and
flowers and something has to support that. So the soil is what's supporting that. And the other thing is it really
needs consistent watering. Not flush with water, not flooded,
and certainly not dried out. That's what's going to really
be the killer of cucumbers. You'll notice it really quickly as
these leaves will start to wilt. These leaves are nice and
crisp. When I like move them, they kind of spring right
back to their normal form. Sign of a well-watered leaf, right? So what I've done is I'm growing it in
a grow bag and that's because I can pick it up and move it back here. I can move
it outside, I can be portable with it. But grow bags tend to dry out a little
bit and other containers can as well. So what I would say is
early on in its life, you can feel pretty comfortable
just overhead watering it. As it grows up to a phase more like
this I would highly recommend throwing a drip spike on there or hand watering with
a watering can or just watering at the base of the plant.
Another thing you can do, if you have a container
that can wick water up, is you can put this in a larger
basin, pour water into that basin, maybe an inch or so and boom, that
soil will just suck it right up. And then you have a more consistent
amount of moisture because that, as far as your care of the cucumber,
will be the number one killer. You will underwater it and it will
quickly die. Tip four is fertilization. Now a lot of the fertilization comes in
when you actually build the soil in the first place. Whether you're growing it
outdoors inground or in raised beds, just building a good raised bed soil is
going to help. And also in containers, the mix that you choose is
going to do a really big job, but it's still going to want some
fertilization throughout the season. So if you think about organic fertilizers, you can think about things that provide
a little more nitrogen early on for that growth. And then also stuff that provides a
little more phosphorus potassium as the plant starts to fruit and flower. So I might do something like chicken
manure early on and then I might move into like blood and bone meal later
on or something of that nature. Tip five is probably what you all care
about the most and that would be how do you make sure that it
flowers, that it fruits, what kind of problems are you
having in that phase of growth? So the first problem that most people
have is early flowers will just fall off. And if you're moving from spring to
summer and temps are still dipping pretty, pretty low, that's probably what's happening because
these plants evolved in the tropics, they're not used to that. And so while
they will still grow, out of the tropics, you do have to remember that genetically
they're just not used to that. And so the flowers may drop. As you
move into the heat of the summer, the long warm days and
that keeps on happening, then you may have a watering issue,
a disease issue, a nutrient issue, something like that. But the most
common one is that transition. So I would just keep an eye out for that. The other thing is unless you've bought
a variety or you're growing a variety that is self pollinating
or parthenocarpic, you do have to have a pollinator
population to actually set fruit because they don't do it themselves, right? So
they need the help of mother nature. You can hand pollinate if you want, which I'll do a video on
sometime in the future, but what I like to do is I just place
my grow bag or my container in an area that I know bees and other
pollinators already are. So maybe next to my
Spanish lavender plant, maybe next to you know my whole
host of beans that I have going on. And you just need to do that because
otherwise you won't get any cucumber. As far as problems you'll have, there are quite a few and in the article
I've prepared on epicgardening.com I have exactly what to do for each
specific pest and each specific disease, but I won't go into all of them here. Cucumber beetles are probably
your most annoying one with cukes, as the name would imply. I find
for a lot of flying insect pests, covering your plants early
prevents a lot of that. Once they get nice and robust, oftentimes
the pests don't even want to eat them. But early on when they're
nice and sensitive and weak, then cover them up with some
sort of floating row cover. It's getting to be summer now. So a summer-weight style cloth can
do a really good job, insect netting. That prevents a lot of pest issues. And
then when it comes to disease, the one, and you know what it is, the one that causes the most
problems is powdery mildew. And it looks like a fuzzy sort of dust
that starts to appear on the leaves. Now an ounce of prevention worth
a pound of cure. So air flow, trellising upwards, making sure it
doesn't sit laying on the ground, all good ideas. And again,
powdery mildew is super annoying. So if you have a super affected leaf,
then you can chop it off, sacrifice it, throw it in the burn pit, whatever. But I've seen a lot of different
things work on powdery mildew. Even just diluted milk sprayed with
water can work. There are other things, like neem oil can work. It's very difficult to get
rid of once it spreads though, so keep an eye on it and really
just try to increase air flow, decrease humidity a little
bit and you will stave it off. So here is the massive
leaf of the cucumber plant. You can see it's quite thin and this
one's a little eaten up because it's sitting on the ground. Probably had
some pests come in, but no big deal. So this is what can really dry out, right? This is doing a lot of work for your plant
and so you have to make sure you keep it well watered. Here we can see
if we go underneath the canopy, we have the Marketmore 76. It's a great
example of a really nice looking one. The thing you'll notice is, if
you let it sit on the ground, you get what's called a field spot.
It's this lightening right here. So if you don't like that, then
don't let it sit on the ground. And sitting on the ground can
cause some disease issues. But as we get into the
interior of the plant, you can see we have another
flower with some fruit behind it. So that of course is a female
flower because it's got
this fruit swelling behind it. Here's another example of a
female flower. That's how you know. You see that little fruit swelling. Now
here, this flower right here is female, but see this empty stem? That was the
male. It's blurring out a little bit, but that was the male. And so
that's how you know which is which. And then as we go up here, it's
kind of a cool little note, you've got a tendril coming out. And
this is how the cucumber attaches, right? So you can see this tendril decided to
attach to the cucumber plant itself right there, which is kind of
cool and kind of neat. But then you also have examples
of where it'll attach to the actual trellis of which
I cannot find one right now. And you have an example of
where I attached a tomato
clip just for some extra, extra support. Cucumbers are one of the most fun crops
to grow cause you felt like you really did something. You know, I don't have anything against growing
things like lettuce, spinach, kale. I love it and I grow a ton of it.
But when you harvest a huge cucumber, it feels like you really
achieved something in the
garden. You can slice it up, you can pickle it, you can
do whatever you want with it. So I hope these tips helped. There's actually quite a bit more about
growing cucumbers that I could do, but for now, I want to get you
guys off on the right foot. And if you have any questions, as
always, drop in the Comments below. Good luck in the garden
and keep on growing.
