Bitter Cucumber

[hendi_alex]

Several years ago my cucumber plants made an overwhelming majority of very bitter fruit. At that time I researched the issue as to causes and prevention. Articles talk mostly about water stress and other environmental factors which can contribute to bitterness. The thing that affected my crop that year was amount of light, as the plants were placed too deeply in the shade and only received about 2-3 hours of direct sunlight each day. Other things such as low temperatures, heat stress, or other issues can cause bitterness to be a problem. Selecting bitter free varieties is mentioned as a remedy to the problem of bitter fruit. Some varieties just do not tend to produce the bitter chemicals under any typical growing condition. I don't think that any of the burpless varieties are ever bitter, but then they don't tend to have that robust cucumber flavor either, so IMO that represents a trade off.

Since that bad season, new varieties were bought and the beds were moved further into the light, mostly half a day sun to full sun, and we've had no bitter fruit since. That is until this year! That is what prompted this post. One of my beds is planted in full sun, planted with Asian varieties. There appear to be two varieties planted together, one is somewhat smooth and the other is more spiny. The smooth fruit has been consistently bitter for at least half the length of each cucumber. My guess is that the bitterness came from prolonged cool temperatures, combined with some heat stress and water stress after the temperatures warmed in the past couple of weeks.

We plant three classes of cucumbers: pickling, Asian, and burpless. A little research on line can give lists of tested varieties which indicate sweet or non bitter. Also, many of the seed companies indicate which varieties tend no to be bitter. IMO it is worth the effort to pick a good mix of seeds which include many non bitter varieties. That way the gardener can have a variety of cucumber size, flavor, and texture, and can most avoid the bitterness issue as well.

What strategies do the rest of you use to avoid bitterness and what are some of your favorite varieties in that regard?

[imafan26]

I actually found that variety made the biggest difference.
I grew marketmore and poinsett and they both had good crunch but also a bitter bite. It might be because of the heat.

I grew a non-bitter Tendergreen, Diva (Park's seed) , and Suyo long a Japanese/English type. I also grew spacemaster. Spacemaster is crisp and not bitter, but had to be eaten the day it was picked or it will lose its' crispness. I grow mostly Suyo long, because most people only wand the Japanese cucumber and do not want any other kind. Suyo long is heat tolerant too, so it does not get bitter.

[mattie g]

In my experience, I've simply found larger cucumbers to be more biter. It's a tricky thing to pick a cucumber at just the right size to ensure some of that sweetness and crispiness.

Of course, I only have a couple years experience with this, and I've only grown my cukes in one area, which gets about 7 hours of sunlight per day. Maybe if I adjusted their location I could tell the difference.

[SOB]

I have grown the same cucumbers for 4 years (a burpless variety from Burpee) and are the best when picked on the small side. Once they get bigger then have more chance of being bitter. We found that removing the skin helps that bitterness too.

Also, one year almost the entire year's crop was bitter and that just happened to be a year with a lot of heat and little rain (and I didn't water as much as I should have).

[jal_ut]

I have only been planting one variety for several years now. It is Marketmore. A straight 8 type and no bitter fruit here. They get full sun and a deep watering once a week.