How to Grow MORE Cucumbers (Expert Tips)

cucumbers are among our most favorite summer garden plants without much effort we get wonderful harvests but with a little extra effort we can get massive harvests join me today as i share with you a number of tips to grow more cucumbers than you ever thought possible hi i'm garner scott and this is where i'm growing most of my cucumbers this year when you choose to grow cucumbers there are two basic types of cucumbers you have pickling cucumbers and you have slicing cucumbers in this part of the bed these are boston pickling variety and on that part of the bed is a market more 76 variety a pickling cucumber like the boston pickling variety tends to have a thicker skin and a denser flesh which makes it great for making pickles whereas a variety like the market more 76 tends to have a thinner skin with a juicier interior perfect for slicing and adding to a relish dish or a salad and as you choose the varieties pickling or slicing you can choose two basic types of plants you can grow bush cucumbers or you can grow vining cucumbers now the bush varieties will tend to stay relatively short in stature which makes them ideal for growing in a pot on a patio but the vining varieties like these two will grow and grow and so growing them vertically is the first tip you can put the plants closer together and you can give them more space to grow if you grow them vertically so by growing vertically i can space my plants closer together all these plants are about six to eight inches apart and then i train them up twine using these tomato clips as soon as they reach the base of this trellis those tendrils are going to grab on so i don't need to continue training them on the twine i just need to get them up to the trellis so that these tendrils can grab on to get the most cucumbers that you can it's helpful to understand how a cucumber plant grows now if you follow the main stem of the cucumber you'll come to these little junctions and at each of these nodes four things are going to happen and all this is happening from this same growth point in this intersection you're going to get a tendril and the job of the tendril is to wrap around something and hold the plant in place you're also going to see flowers you might have one flower you might have two flowers you're going to have a leaf and the job of this leaf is photosynthesis to soak up the energy of the sun and feed it back to the plant and you'll also see the growth of a new branch and this branch will continue growing and at each of the junctions of this branch you'll see the same four things a leaf a tendril and a flower it's these flowers that will develop into the cucumber fruit cucumbers are a meniscus plant that means that some of the flowers will be male and some of the flowers will be female so as you go up the main stem you'll see the different types of flowers and you have to have the pollen from the male flower transfer to the female flower for it to be pollinated and develop fruit so i'm often asked why you're not getting cucumbers when you have a lot of flowers well it could be that you have a lot of male flowers and typically the male flowers will develop first lower on the plant and then as the plant grows it will begin putting out female flowers the plant has to be big enough there has to be enough leaves to support the development of the fruits and so that's why the female flowers tend to come later well when you understand the differences in the types of flowers you can look at the plant and easily decide which is which so if you look at this flower you'll see that it's a female with a little tiny cucumber right behind it but if you drop down to the node just below you'll see a flower without that bulbous growth beneath the flower this is a male flower and so you need both the male flower and the female flower to get fruit at some of the nodes you might notice two male flowers and then at others you might notice two female flowers the transfer of the male pollen to the female flower requires a pollinator you gotta get the insects into the flowers to make this happen and here's where the next tip comes in plant some other types of flowers near your cucumbers so right here along this side i'm growing chamomile and at the end of the bed i'm growing sunflowers by having flowering plants near your cucumbers you're more likely to have a pollinator that will give you the cucumbers you're looking for and that's important because the more insect pollinators you have the more fruit you will have the flowers on these plants may only last for a day before they drop off so if they're not pollinated in that first 24 hours you're not going to get fruit but by having flowers all around your bed you're giving the plant a better chance at pollination you've probably heard that you should pinch off the suckers on an indeterminate tomato plant but have you heard that you should pinch off the suckers on a vining cucumber plant well you should and that's another tip to help keep your plants under control remember at each of these nodes you're going to have a new branch develop and that branch can grow many feet long overwhelming a growing space if you allow your cucumbers to grow on the ground they can quickly take over yet another reason to grow vertically it's much easier to manage the plants when you can see them grow up a trellis as opposed to just sprawling across the ground and so the process of pinching off the suckers is relatively easy once you begin identifying the different parts of the plant so at this junction right here here's our tendril here's our main stem here's our leaf and as we look underneath here this small leaf is what's going to form into a new branch and so we can just pinch it off and right behind it is the flower that is yet to develop now it does take a little bit of extra time to identify the different components as i look at this node further down i see a female flower with the ovaries that will develop into a fruit and what looks to be another stem but upon closer examination it's just a small flower and right behind it is the developing sucker so now i've cleaned up these two nodes and allowed the flowers to remain now you may be thinking that by plucking off those suckers we're reducing the potential development of our harvest and that's true each of those suckers will grow into a new vine that can give us more fruit but lower down on the plant i think it's a good idea to get rid of the suckers as the plant grows i will allow some of those suckers to develop and give me more branches but lower down there's a couple things that they do that can really hinder how much fruit you get first off those lower suckers that develop into side branches will begin to cover the ground and a lot of the diseases that can affect your cucumbers come from the soil so we want to get those leaves off the soil but probably most important of all is all of those sprawling branches if you're not growing vertically and you allow a lot of these suckers to develop or they're going to hide some of the cucumbers that develop underneath and any of us that have been growing cucumbers for a long time know at the end of the season when you're cleaning up your plants you always find hidden cucumbers and that becomes incredibly important when it comes to getting the most harvest because think how the plant thinks all it wants to do is propagate all it wants to do is get its flowers pollinated produce fruit and that fruit will produce seed and once that happens once a cucumber is set and begins to mature well the plant says my job is done and it won't set as many new flowers to develop into fruit so you have to continue harvesting as soon as the cucumbers are ready to harvest but if there's one hidden underneath some of these lower leaves you may wonder why your plant is starting to shut down and not producing anymore it could be because there's a hidden cucumber that is maturing turning yellow and telling the plant to go ahead and shut down because its job is done removing the lower suckers or side branches is very similar to what we did before we take a look at the plant identify all the different components here's the main stem here's the leaf there are flowers so this branch right here that's growing off to the side began as one of those little suckers it's too big to just come in and try to pinch off so take scissors or pruning shears and cut it out and now the energy from this leaf is going to go to this developing cucumber and we'll continue up the plant and do the same thing here's another one of those suckers we'll cut it off and we've freed up a lot of space underneath this plant these lower leaves are starting to turn yellow and that's normal on plants the older leaves will turn yellow so i'll come in and just go ahead and prune them off as well so i've cleared up the space under this plant really improved the air circulation and i'll do the same with all of the surrounding plants and improving the air circulation around these plants is very important that's another tip and why we're doing some of the pruning one of the most common problems that will hit cucumbers is powdery mildew and the most common cause of powdery mildew is poor air circulation so by removing some of the leaves and the suckers lower down and then by pinching off the suckers as the plant develops we're really limiting the potential for powdery mildew in addition to being in charge of these plants and determining how big they're going to grow and taking charge of the size of the plant can really affect how much harvest you get when you look at a seed packet for a variety like this market more 76 it will probably tell you that the plant gets four feet tall and that's true in many cases if you allow the plants to sprawl and all of those suckers to develop into vines of their own well that's an awful lot for the root system of that plant to support and so the plant might only get about four feet tall before it just can't support any more growth but if you prune off some of those suckers and allow the plants to continue growing i prefer vertically but you can do the same thing on the ground you will get longer vines i've had market more 76 plants that were 12 feet tall when i grew them in the greenhouse at the galileo garden because i was pruning off most of those suckers and as the root system developed it could support a bigger plant and then as that bigger plant got taller i allowed some of those side branches to develop and was inundated with fruit from every single cucumber that i grew another way to get more cucumbers is to stagger your plantings now i started all these at the same time which is why they're pretty much the same size but by waiting three to four weeks and then starting seeds in a completely new bed i have this cycle repeating now as these flowers develop into fruit and we harvest them we will gradually be working our way up the plant because all of the new fruit will be developing a little farther up the plant and at some point the plant does reach the end of its life cycle those yellowing leaves that are normal will fall off and there just isn't enough energy to keep the plant growing but if we have a whole other bed with new plants that are three or four weeks behind this then we continue harvesting in that other bed and if we have a third bed that is started three to four weeks later we can really extend our season by having distinctive plantings and distinctive harvests throughout the growing season individually each of these tips will give you more cucumbers but when you do it all together you will have harvests like you can't imagine so prune off some of the lower branches and leaves to improve air circulation and cut down on disease pinch off those suckers before they develop and overtake your area but allow some of the side branches to grow vertically so you can keep it all under control put some flowers in to attract the pollinators and stagger your planting so that you'll always have something ready to harvest and by all means harvest when the cucumber is ready to harvest and you will have cucumbers to eat give away and brag about for years to come i'm gardener scott enjoy gardening [Music] you

Channel: Gardener Scott

Views: 495,968

Keywords: gardener scott, gardner scott, how to grow cucumbers, growing cucumbers, harvesting cucumbers, grow cucumbers, how to grow, gardening tips, tips for growing cucumbers, how to grow cucumbers vertically, how to grow cucumbers on a trellis, prune cucumbers, trellis cucumbers, trellis cucumbers diy, trellis cucumber plants, grow more cucumbers, grow more cucumbers than ever

Id: P3xGnALoZc8

Length: 16min 12sec (972 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 07 2021