Cucumber & pickle - sowing, growing, harvest. Same plant for both!

Cucumber and pickle is easy to grow as long as a few basic practices are followed.

Name – Cucumis sativus
Family – Cucurbitaceae or gourd family
Type – vegetable, annual

Height – 1 ½ to 6 ½ feet (0.5 to 2 m)
Exposure – full sun
Soil – ordinary but well drained

Harvest – 3 to 4 months after sowing, from May to October.

Caring for your cucumber from seed to harvest requires several mandatory steps for them to develop well.

Sowing and planting cucumber

Sow in seed holes with 3 seeds per hole from March to June.

Transplant to the growing bed in May at the earliest, since freezing still occurs before that.

If you purchase cucumber seedlings from a nursery, plant them directly in the ground when the last frosts are past, after the middle of May.

Growing and caring for cucumbers is quite easy if adequate growing conditions are set up.

The trickiest step is pruning. If well pruned, a cucumber plant will grow well and the harvest will be plentiful.

This is for cucumber plants grown directly in the ground.

Pinch just above the second leaf, and wait for two new stems to form.
Pinch each of these two stems just after the 4th leaf, and then prune all following branches one leaf after each fruit.

Often the case for cucumber plants grown vertically in greenhouses.

Let the main stem grow up to about 6 ½ feet (2 meters), then pinch it at the tip.
Side shoots will form between each leaf, called “suckers”.
Along the lower 28 inches (0.70 cm), remove suckers regularly, as well as any fruits that develop directly on the stem.

Nothing special is needed other than pinching the head off just after the second leaf.
Harvest fruits more regularly because leaving them on the plant will lower productivity.