hardland
Senior Member
Posts: 248
Joined: Tue Apr 06, 2010 11:05 am
Location: Sth Florida

Stages of a cucumber plant..

I have been watching my 3 cucumber plants closely for about 3 weeks. t first it was lots of male blossoms and lots of bees. Then it was a few female blossoms and still bees. Once the females were pollinated, the bees seem to have left. Now each plant has about 4 or 5 cucs growing and I have lots of lady bugs and lady bug larva, hardly any new blossoms. I suppose this is normal.

User avatar
jal_ut
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 7447
Joined: Sun Jan 18, 2009 10:20 pm
Location: Northern Utah Zone 5

If you pick the fruit and keep them watered, they will continue to bear fruit until frost. That is, if they don't get any diseases. My cukes got the top leaves frozen on September 6, and they are still trying to produce fruit.

tedln
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 2179
Joined: Thu Jun 25, 2009 6:06 pm
Location: North Texas

For some reason for me, summer squash and cucumbers seem to be cyclic in producing and setting fruit.

Each plant will produce five our six fruit. Then they seem to just sit and grow for a while. Then they go into another productive cycle. If the fruit from the first productive cycle is still on the vine, it seems to delay the next productive cycle. I think plants are simply determined to continue the existence of their species by fruiting and seeding. When they have fruit on the vine, they seem to think their job is done. When the fruit is removed, they again feel the need to fruit and seed.

I am growing a sweet cucumber which produces fruit 14" long and longer. When the vines have a few fruit on which I allow to grow to almost full length, they produce female blooms which abort the tiny fruit until I harvest the larger fruit.

Ted

User avatar
Lifestyle Lift Journey
Full Member
Posts: 24
Joined: Sun Sep 12, 2010 10:11 pm
Location: Australia

I had lots of lady bugs on my cucumbers last time I grew them. Then they got diseases and didn't produce any more fruits. Watch out for disease and take care of it when you first see the sign.

garden5
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 3062
Joined: Fri Aug 07, 2009 5:40 pm
Location: ohio

tedln wrote:For some reason for me, summer squash and cucumbers seem to be cyclic in producing and setting fruit.

Each plant will produce five our six fruit. Then they seem to just sit and grow for a while. Then they go into another productive cycle. If the fruit from the first productive cycle is still on the vine, it seems to delay the next productive cycle. I think plants are simply determined to continue the existence of their species by fruiting and seeding. When they have fruit on the vine, they seem to think their job is done. When the fruit is removed, they again feel the need to fruit and seed.

I am growing a sweet cucumber which produces fruit 14" long and longer. When the vines have a few fruit on which I allow to grow to almost full length, they produce female blooms which abort the tiny fruit until I harvest the larger fruit.

Ted
I've fount it to work the same way with my peppers. It seems like I get at "flush" of ripe peppers, then nothing, then another "flush". With my toms, it's one here, one there. But, not with the peppers.

With the cukes, you will get more of a yield if you pick them while they are smaller rather than larger.

User avatar
Troppofoodgardener
Senior Member
Posts: 133
Joined: Fri Oct 01, 2010 10:49 pm
Location: Tropical North, Australia

I have 3 cuc plants, said to be of the Lebanese variety, but bought from different places. Two from a gardenware store and one from a local grower. I find the locally grown plant has the best cucs (dark green), but only has a handful of female flowers at any given time. It has heaps of males though, ALL of the time.

Whereas the other 2 plants (paler green) were having a bonanza of females but no males. Solution? Cross-pollinating. Which has created an interesting type of cucumber.

The first flush of cucumbers were pretty regular-shaped. However now that we've harvested so many, the plants have started to produce
some that are shaped like papayas, eggplants and some which are almost round with just a tapered end. We even had one which was 'square' shaped when cut:

[url=https://img843.imageshack.us/I/pa050200.jpg/][img]https://img843.imageshack.us/img843/1606/pa050200.th.jpg[/img][/url]

Anyone find their cucumbers grow into interesting shapes as well?



Return to “Vegetable Gardening Forum”