Your Cucumbers Will LOVE You For This: 5 Things To Do NOW!

what's going on gardeners it's thursday june 2nd and it is hot hot hot here on the southeastern coast of north carolina now that the summer weather is here and it is getting hot it is important that we do everything we can to minimize the stress that our plants endure to maximize our harvest so that's why in today's video i'm going to show you five different tips for growing cucumbers that your cucumber plants will absolutely love you for if you're new to the channel please consider subscribing and hitting the bell to receive new video notifications and check out our amazon storefront and spreadshop in the video description for a list of the gardening products i use an awesome custom designed apparel and other gear your support is greatly appreciated and the first tip i'm going to give you is not to rush your cucumber transplants out into your garden now if you're like me and your foundational crops in your garden are tomatoes and peppers you are used to planting your tomatoes and peppers out after your last chance of frost and that is fine for tomatoes and peppers because they can tolerate the early spring temperatures after frost has passed where it still dips down into the low 40s and upper 30s that is not a big deal for your tomatoes and peppers as long as the temperatures bounce back up and warm up during the day they will recover just fine however that is not the case for your cucumber plants your cucumber plants are in the cucurbit family they are much more sensitive to cool temperatures than your nightshade your tomatoes and your peppers and your potatoes and your eggplant your cucumbers should not be planted until several weeks maybe even a full month after your last frost date you don't want to plant out your cucumbers until your nighttime temperatures are always consistently at least 50 degrees fahrenheit or warmer they do not do well when nights dip down into the 40s or the 30s like your tomatoes and pepper plants will when it comes to growing tomatoes it takes on average about 120 days from the day you plant that tomato seed in the ground for it to grow up into a plant and have its first ripe fruit your cucumber plants will be ready about 50 to 60 days on average after you plant that seed into the ground or into your transplant trays so they will produce in roughly half the time as a tomato so even if you plant your cucumber plants about a month after your tomatoes you will still be harvesting cucumbers off your cucumber plants before the overwhelming majority of your tomatoes in fact i have already harvested two foot long cucumbers off of this china jade plant right here the second cucumber growing tip that your plants will love you for is to always make sure that you have a two to three inch layer of mulch around the base of your cucumber plants at all times and that's because that while cucumbers are very sensitive to cold temperatures they're also very sensitive to heat stress cucumbers are actually a lot like us they are fair weather plants that want every day to be 80 degrees and every night to be 65 degrees and by the way if you know where that place is all year round that's also pretty cheap to live you make sure to let me know because i'm a fair weather plant myself now if you watch my videos often you know that i am a big fan of using all natural shredded hardwood bark mulch as a mulch in my garden and i like this because it not only locks in the soil moisture and keeps the roots nice and cool and evenly moist which is critical to prevent heat stress in your plants but as it breaks down it will also add a lot of organic matter to the soil however if you don't want to use hardwood bark mulch you can use any kind of all natural mulch it doesn't matter you can use cedar mulch cypress mulch pine bark nuggets straw grass clippings anything that isn't a dyed mulch because that is usually just nasty ground up pallets and junk wood that you wouldn't want in your garden and also don't use other things like synthetic rubber mulches and such just make sure it is a natural mulch and what this mulch will do is it will prevent heat stress in your plants by keeping the top level of soil protected from the uv rays of the sun so your roots will stay nice and cool and it will also maintain even moisture in the soil by preventing evaporation keeping those roots evenly moist and protecting your soil while also adding organic matter into your soil is just wonderful for any plant the third tip for growing cucumbers that your plants will love you for is to get them up off the ground and grow them vertically cucumbers are highly susceptible to pests and disease getting them in the air growing vertically will not only provide more air flow and lessen disease but you'll also get those fruits up off the ground because pests that crawl along the soil love to eat those cucumbers so if you can get those fruits up off the ground they will be less likely to be damaged by pests as well now my favorite way of growing cucumbers vertically is this string trellis method which i have showed you how to do many times in the past and i grow my tomatoes predominantly in this method and all you need for this is something overhead like a cable or some kind of pvc pipe or a piece of wood and then one of these double tomato hooks and tomato clips which i have linked in my amazon storefront down in the video description all you do is you take this synthetic nylon string that comes pre-installed on the double tomato hook and you attach one of these tomato clips to the plant and then from there you can choose to either wrap the string around the vines of the plant or you can use more of these clips to clip it to the vine however there are many more ways that you can do this you can grow them up along a fence you can grow them up along cattle panel you can build a fun little teepee structure like i built right here and the cucumbers will naturally climb up that structure they are a climbing vine so as long as you give them something to grab onto they will climb up whatever you choose to use as your trellis feel free to be creative just get them up off the ground so they will be less susceptible to diseases and pests the fourth cucumber growing tip that i'm going to give you is to grow parthenocarpic cucumber varieties now what does that mean well there are three different types of fruiting plants in nature there are self-incompatible plants like pawpaw trees where you need to have two genetically unique plants where the male pollen has to be carried from the flower on one plant to the female parts of the flower of the other genetically unique plant and those two genetically unique plants must cross pollinate in order to pollenize the fruit and have it set there are self-fertile plants which means one individual plant has the ability to pollinate itself now it can have the male and female parts enclosed in a single flower and all that has to be done is the wind needs to shake it up to shake the male pollen all over the female parts or it could have separate male and female flowers and something like a bee will have to travel from the male flower to the female flower that is how cucumbers generally speaking work and the third option is to have a parthenocarpic fruit with parthenocarpic fruits the flowers do not need pollination at all to set fruits they can set fruits in sterility in the absence of pollination now the overwhelming majority of cucumber varieties out there are self-fertile however the male flowers and the female flowers are different here you see a female flower on a cucumber and you know it's a female flower because the flower right here has a baby cucumber attached to it that means that it is a female flower now this flower down here it has no baby cucumber attached this is a male flower and the fl and the pollen is kept inside this flower so in order for this plant to pollinate successfully a bee has to visit this flower and transfer enough pollen into this flower in order to fertilize the cucumber and then this cucumber right here will turn into a baby fruit and it will eventually mature into a full-sized cucumber if a bee does not visit this plant and we do not get pollen transfer or if the bee does not transfer enough pollen this cucumber right here will shrivel up and abort and fall off this right here is a zucchini plant and zucchini are in the exact same cucurbit family as cucumbers so they have the same pollination requirements and right here the reason why this zucchini is shriveling up is because it was not pollinated in order for this to have been pollinated i would have needed this male flower right here pollen transfer would have had to have happened into this fruit blossom which is since aborted so in order for that to happen the plant has to pollinate itself using predominantly bees but the reason why i had to show you what it looked like when a fruit aborts itself due to a lack of pollination on my zucchini plant is because i'm growing a partheno carpet variety of cucumber right here this variety is called bite alpha and i've made many videos of it on the past which i will link to above it is an incredible cucumber very disease resistant burpless extremely crisp and it sets fruit without pollination one of the biggest problems people have with good cucumber production is they lose a lot of fruits to lack of pollination they just don't get enough bees in their garden so they wind up having a lot of different fruits fail and this variety is so amazing because the fruits will hold and grow to maturity even if a bee does not visit and pollinate them in fact if the bee doesn't visit and they don't get cross-pollinated by another variety and no male pollen makes it into the female flower they will grow completely seed free seedless fruits and this variety right here bite alpha is incredibly popular for growing in greenhouses because it does not require pollination at all because i love diversity in my garden and eating different varieties of food i made sure to go out and get a completely different partheno carpet variety this variety right here is called china jade i've been growing it for two years it is my second favorite cucumber and this variety right here makes enormous one yard long fruits i've already harvested two giant cucumbers off of this plant they fruit so quickly despite their size these are also parthenocarpic they set fruit without pollination and the two that i harvested were completely seedless and delicious now if you want to make sure that your fruits have the best chances of being seedless you'll want to plant them far away from each other if you're growing different varieties because if they cross pollinate with the male flowers you will get seeds the fruit will be perfectly fine and delicious and edible but they will have seeds so i have my china jade growing over here and then i have my two bite alphas growing on the complete opposite side of the garden about 45 feet away and that is far enough generally speaking that the bees won't go directly from plant to plant so they very rarely cross pollinate now if you grow a partheno carpet variety will all the fruit hold no you still will get some fruit losses and they're especially susceptible to temperatures because that's just how cucumbers are so you will lose some of them nothing in nature is a hundred percent however you will get more fruit off of these carpet varieties than you will growing the standard meniscus varieties where every single individual cucumber will have to be pollinated so i truly think that i get double if not triple the yields off of this variety than all of the others as you can see i'm getting cucumbers all over this plant and it still has a long way to go there's more cucumbers down here here's one two three just great production and i'm growing four plants total i'm growing i'm growing these two here as well as the two that i just showed you growing up my garden tepee they do extremely well in my hot humid conditions and the fifth tip that i'm going to give you for growing cucumbers that your plants will love you for is to succession plant them and what succession planting means is that you periodically plant out new plants into the garden now remember when i told you earlier that cucumber plants will fruit in roughly half the time of a tomato plant from the day that you plant that seed into the ground or your seed trays well cucumber plants mature very quickly but they also live fast and they die hard your cucumber plants have a very short lifespan as do most other cucurbits like your zucchini and many of the squashes so you're not going to be able in most cases to maintain those plants throughout the entire summer like you would be able to say a tomato plant an indeterminate tomato plant that will produce all the way until frost in fact i would caution you against that because cucumber plants usually get beat up so much and they tire out so quickly that they become weak and they become a magnet for pests and diseases so by trying to keep them in your garden too long you will actually bring more pests and diseases into your garden by providing them weak plants to attack therefore i recommend that every roughly six to eight weeks you start new cucumber plants and new zucchini plants and that's what i'm doing right now i have two new bite alphas two new china jades and two zucchini plants that i'm starting inside this six cell tray right here and here i also have some more sunflowers that i'm planting as well because i succession plant them as well so i always have sunflowers in full bloom as trap crops which is another link that i'll link to above for your benefit and also for the beauty and for the pollinators in my garden so there's beautiful cucumber plants that i was just showing you that we're just starting to produce and looking pretty good and still young and healthy i'm telling you in four to six weeks they're going to be beat up they're going to have disease and they're going to start tiring out so i want to make sure that these plants are ready to go and since i'm planting them right now they will probably be ready for transplant in about three weeks and they will probably be blooming in about five to six weeks so always make sure to have fresh transplants in your garden it's also worth mentioning that fresh plants are going to be far more diseased and pest resistant so by keeping the fresh ones predominantly in your garden they will be less vulnerable to pests and disease now for a bonus tip there is a bit of a debate as to whether you should direct seed your cucurbits like your cucumbers zucchini and watermelon directly into the ground or if you should start them in six cell seed trays or other types of pots like i am here is my take on the issue i personally believe that it is best to begin those transplants inside a an external pot like a seed tray or a small container because baby cucumber plants and zucchini plants squash plants gourd plants pumpkin plants while they do great being direct seeded into the ground the baby plants once they germinate are highly susceptible to damage from pest diseases and even being uprooted by high winds so i like to start my transplants in a pest free almost disease free clean room like inside this sun room right here so they can be hardened off for a couple of weeks and i can build a strong root structure and a thicker caliper around the base of the stem so they are less prone to being damaged by pests and diseases then after about three weeks when they're nice strong healthy looking vines that have gotten past that infancy stage and they have some true leaves and they're hardened off to the sun i will plant them out in the garden and i find doing it that way you are much less likely to have your baby seedlings damaged early in their life so everybody i sure hope you found this video helpful if you did please make sure to hit that like button subscribe to the channel and ring that notification bell so you're notified when we release more videos like these if you're curious about any of the products that i use for real in my garden please check out my amazon storefront link linked in the video description for real products that i actually use in my garden and while you're there check out my spreadshop link for custom merch if you want to support the channel thank you all so much for watching and i hope to see all of you again on the next video we're at donuts on a stick in the outer banks and gail is getting a pup cup ready buddy oh that looks so good how come i didn't get one of these i want a biscuit in my ice cream best day ever right mr mr

Channel: The Millennial Gardener

Views: 1,610,797

Keywords: growing cucumbers, growing cucumber plants, how to grow cucumbers, growing cucumbers vertically, planting cucumbers, planting cucumber plants, grow cucumbers, cucumber tips, cucumber, cucumbers, cucumber plants, cucumber plant, fruit trees, fruit tree, garden, gardening, gardening tips, garden tips, gardening tips and tricks, food forest, edible landscaping, raised bed, raised beds, vegetable gardening, vegetable garden, organic gardening, how to, grow, do, millennial gardener

Id: 8zFtuH_hGSA

Length: 17min 10sec (1030 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 10 2022