Cucumbers

I pretty much like all the vegies from the garden, but I do have my favorites. Tomatoes are probably my favorite overall crop, and I probably eat more tomatoes than anything else. Cucumbers and peppers probably are neck and neck. I eat a lot of peppers, but these we consume year around. Marge freezes and cans a lot of peppers, and we use peppers in about everything. We love peppers in scrambled eggs. They just add something to eggs. When Marge fries up a pound or two of lose hamburger for kind of lose sandwiches, she adds a bunch of onions and peppers. Most of these are sweet bell peppers.

It's kind of the same with cucumbers. I eat a ton of cucumbers fresh right from the garden. When the garden is cranking out cucumbers, I'll bet I eat four or five pounds a day for sure. Usually it is six to eight long European type cucumbers. I like to peel mine, but the skin is thin and bitter free so one doesn't really need to. Some of our friends don't peel theirs. The other way we eat cucumbers is in pickles. Hardly a meal goes by that we don't have dill pickles with whatever we are consuming. I've never really cared for sweet pickles. I do like a sweet pickle relish.

Cucumbers come in hybrid and open-pollinated varieties. If you keep seed from the hybrid varieties, the seed will germinate, but it won't produce plants like the original hybrid. You can save the seed from the open-pollinated varieties and it will produce the same variety. We grow both types of cucumbers.

Cucumbers are also divided up into their using habits. Slicing is probably the most popular, where it is used to slice it up and eat raw. These slicing cucumbers can range in size from fairly small, like 4 or 5 inches long, up to pretty good sized ones, like 12 to 14 inches long. Another group of cucumbers is pickling cucumbers. These are normally short blocky cucumbers that are say 3 to 6 or 7 inches long. We grow one that is H19 Little Leaf where the cucumbers are from about 1.5 inches up to 3 inches long. It seems like these little pickling cucumbers tend to be more crisp when made into pickles.

One other variety is loosely named Asian or European or Specialty cucumbers. These can be long slicers or short picklers or even novelty cucumbers. Some are round and almost resemble a lemon. Some grow 16 to 20 inches long with spines all over them. We planted some of the novelty ones last year, but they were a bust. They were way too delicate and flimsy vines for how we grow cucumbers.

Some people plant their cucumbers in small hills of soil. Normally one will plant 6 to 8 seeds in one hill and then thin them after they come up. One can allow the cucumber vine to grow in all directions which results in the cucumbers being grown right on the ground. But one can also place a tomato cage around the hill of little cucumber plants and then force the cucumber vines to climb up this tomato cage. We make cages out of rebar wire which is 5 feet tall, and we make the cage round and about 1.5 feet across. This works remarkably well. We also plant cucumbers along the edge of cattle panels which are about 5 feet tall and 16 feet long. We use both.

Some plant their seed in the raised mounds but one can also start their seeds in small plastic seed starter flats. We start ours in 2-x-2-inch seed trays, and then when the seedling is up and doing well, we transplant it. This works best for us, but even saying that, we also lose some from getting too much water or even too little. If I had to choose, I'd plant all my seed in the soil and let it come up.

We mainly grow Tasty Jade cucumbers for slicing. They are a long European type cucumber that has very little seeds and is never bitter. Nokya was developed to take the place of Tasty Jade, but we didn't feel it was as good. But we also grow two or three other long slicing cucumbers. My brother grows Suyo Long heirloom cucumbers. I believe the Tasty Jade has a better taste, but the Suyo Long is easier to grow and gets even bigger. The vines of Suyo Long are prolific to say the least. We also grow Tasty Green slicers. They are 8 to 9 inches long and an excellent slicer. Straight Eights or Marketmores are two real popular slicer cucumbers.

For pickling cucumbers we grow Homemade Pickles, Northern Pickling, Little Leaf and General Lee. All of these are excellent pickling cucumbers and pretty decent eaters. Little Leaf is the smallest with the other three being 4 to 6 inches long. All of them will have to be brushed, as they have a kind of spine on them. For several years we haven't had any trouble with our pickles being mushy.

Key to watering a cucumber is to never get them too wet. They actually do better a little dry then too wet. Watch for a stink bug on your cucumber vines. They will suck the juice out of the vine and eventually kill it. If you aren't afraid of Seven, spread a little around the base of the vine. Later on you may even have to spray the entire vine. Another way is to just keep planting new seeds and have a continuous supply of cucs.

Way back in Nebraska probably 40 years ago or so, Marge's sister, Rosemary, said the key to getting rid of the bitterness in eating cucumbers is to cut the ends off the cucumber so that you can see seeds. Rosemary was a home ec teacher at Bassett, Nebraska. Rosey left us probably 20 or 30 years ago. Miss her, but every year as I peel a cucumber I think of her wise words.