Do I need to prune my cucumber plants?

gardenjenny · Sat Jun 27, 2015 1:17 pm

I'm growing a long variety of cucumber and the plants are doing really well. I counted 17 baby cucumbers on just one plant. Is that too many? Do I need to prune some of them off so they others can grow well? I have them trellised so they will be off the ground, and I can feed and water them well as needed.

imafan26 · Sat Jun 27, 2015 9:10 pm

Cucumbers usually don't need to be pruned. Make sure they get enough water and pick the cucumbers when they are about 8 inches long. They will get longer, but they are at their best shorter and will be less seedy.

kayjay · Sun Jun 28, 2015 5:31 am

Yep, I would just stay on top of them and pick them as they're ready, even if you don't want them. Give them away or take up pickling.

gardenjenny · Sun Jun 28, 2015 7:09 am

Woo Hoo! Lots of cucumbers this year!

jal_ut · Tue Jun 30, 2015 11:40 am

I would not prune them. Just pick the fruit and enjoy!
Do you do any home canning? We pick loads of the small cukes for certain pickles we make.

gardenjenny · Thu Jul 02, 2015 7:58 pm

I haven't done any canning, and unfortunately I don't like pickles! I'll share my wealth of cucumbers with friends and family this summer

DonV · Tue Jul 07, 2015 12:17 am

I have always heard you need to prune them (and other nives like winter squash, pumpkins etc) to keep 1 main vine? Is this why my cuc vines are dropping like flies from wilt (it got in cuts?).

Just checked again and everyone says to cut all side vines keeping 1 vine per plant.

applestar · Tue Jul 07, 2015 12:37 am

I usually trellis cucumbers and just keep wrapping any stray vines back onto the trellis. I only prune overlapping vines IF airflow/circulation seems inadequate as in solid wall or fence with a netting trellis, but usually I grow cukes on a free standing trellis.

But last year, I let a volunteer cucurbit grow which turned out to be cucumber, and since the trellis above it was reserved for melons, I let the cucumber take off along the ground to see what would happen. It turned out that cucumbers root from leaf nodes just like winter squash, and with the additional nutrients and water, the leaves and vines grow HUGE with multiple branch vines. When the cucumber swallowed up 4 feet of a 2ft wide row, then proceeded to swallow a pepper plant, I had to out a stop to it and I turned back most of the vines but ruthlessly cut off vines that were reaching for the pepper plant, too.

jal_ut · Tue Jul 07, 2015 2:46 am

Well, I learned to garden tagging my father around. He would plant cucumbers, and all squashes, the same. If I was helping, he would take the shovel and scoop up a shovelful of soil leaving a hole, into which I would toss about 5 seeds and he would then drop the soil back on it and step on it to pack it down an take two steps ahead and repeat. Never did he prune or arrange the vines, just let them grow as they would. Just weed and water. All the vines just sprawled on the ground and made quite a squash patch. When fruit was ready we would just go pick what we wanted. At frost all the winter squash were picked up. None of this ever got trellised. So you see there are lots of ways to grow things. Just do it and have fun! And try some things, there are many more seasons coming. We learn to do by doing.

I have tried a slight variation to that in that I put one seed each 12 inches in the row so I have a row of plants instead of hills. This has worked well. Perhaps this is even better since it would spread the roots out better?