It was the perfect summer. Bees were buzzing everywhere, garden crops were blooming profusely, and the harvest was beyond be-
lief.
It was a normal, perhaps slightly warmer, summer that year, and rainfall was plentiful. I had more crops to give away than I could
keep up with. Particularly prolific were slicing cucumbers. I had planted Straight Eight, Marketmore 76, Lemon Cucumbers and one gynoecious type—Slicemore.
Almost any cucumber that can tolerate cool to warm summers and has a short maturity life of 50 to 65 days will produce in Nova
Scotia.
Best to plant are the bush to semi- bush varieties. They take up less room than sprawling types. Two popular bush varieties are
Spacemaster and Marketmore 76. These have 1 m (3-4’) vines with 18-23 cm (7-9”) cucumbers and mature in about 60 days.
Straight Eight and Burpless Hy- brid are two other popular varie- ties that have longer vines. Buy transplants at a gardening centre
rather than direct seeding.
Transplants are already growing in small containers and can be set out when there is no danger of frost (usually by the first week of June).
Disturbance of the roots can set back the plant and either reduce or delay production. It’s best to buy the transplants in peat pots. Put them directly into the ground so the roots won’t be disturbed. If you come across a gynoecious cucumber being sold as a transplant, get it. Gynoecious cucumbers are varieties that produce nearly all female flowers. Buy a pollinator cucumber as well, such as Mar- ketmore 76 and Straight Eight.
Because the gynoecious cucumber is mostly female, more cucumbers will be produced.
Examples of gynoecious cucumbers are Diva Hybrid, Raider, and Slicemore. But how much production you will get out of any variety will depend on the number of pollinating insects around, and keeping your soil moist at all times.
Dig a hole 15-18cm (5-6”) deep, put in a handful of 6-12 fertilizer, fill in the hole, and mound the soil.
You can put in one, two or three transplants in each hill. Fertilize about every two weeks with RX-15, which is a complete fertilizer that provides every kind of nutrient the plant needs. Space mounds 1 m (3’) apart in full sunlight and keep weeded.
Story By Ron Driskill