Fenton Friday: Cucumber Trials

For this week's community garden report, we are turning it over to one of our summer interns to let us know how their growing project went.

By Taylor Calavetinos

This summer, I was lucky enough to learn how to garden. I have never gardened, nor have I taken care of plants before, but I can proudly say that I have officially learned how to grow cucumbers. 

I decided to plant cucumbers because it’s a vegetable that I truly love to eat throughout the year. I planted four different varieties: ‘Silver Slicer’, ‘Early Spring Burpless’, ‘White Wonder’, and ‘Marketmore’. 

I began this planting process on June 5th, by forming soil mound sand planting a couple of seeds in the top of each mound, about half an inch deep with plenty of space in between each so their vines could spread.

After planting the seedlings, things took a turn. Most of the seedlings sprouted, but before I could get back to the plot to see them, a baby bunny (well, Kathy Jentz and I think it was a baby bunny) had eaten my baby cucumber seedlings, specifically the ‘White Wonder’ and ‘Silver Slicer’. These two varieties sprouted the fastest out of the four. 

After the baby bunny had eaten the young cucumber seedlings, I replanted the ‘Whiter Wonder’ and ‘Silver Slicer’ again. I was still waiting for the ‘Marketmore’ to sprout, while the ‘Early Spring Burpless’ had just begun to sprout. I was back to square one, but this time I used some chicken wire to protect the seedlings from any insects, pests, and baby bunnies. 

Once ‘White Wonder’ and ‘Early Spring Burpless’ developed their true leaves and I was able to thin the seedlings to their strongest three. ‘Silver Slicer’ wasn’t looking too good at this time and sadly, ‘Marketmore’ never sprouted anything.

After some waiting, weeding, and watering, the ‘White Wonder’ grew quicker than I expected. The vines were growing, there were flowers and even some baby cucumbers forming. 

Before this experience of growing my own cucumbers, I had no idea that cucumbers plants had yellow male and female flowers and that you could hand-pollinate the vines. While the cucumber plant had a few growing, Kathy Jentz and I decided to hand-pollinate some of the female flowers by taking male flowers and gentle pressing them on the female flowers. 

Finally, on July 20th, I was able to harvest my own ‘White Wonder’ cucumber that I had grown. I was so excited, mainly because it was a white cucumber, but also because I had grown this from seeds! I’ll probably never look at a cucumber the same because I know how hard it is to grow them.

I was so excited to try the cucumber, but I really wasn’t sure if it was going to taste the same as a regular green cucumber you see in the produce section at your local grocery store, because it was a white cucumber. The cucumber was really tasty, yet a bit bitter. It had a nice crunch like a usual green cucumber. 

‘Marketmore’ never sprouted anything, so I decided to focus on the other three varieties instead.

The ‘Early Spring Burpless’ had grown and started to send out vines with beautiful yellow flowers, but it eventually caught a fungal disease and never grew any cucumbers.

Currently, at the plot, the ‘Silver Slicer’ looks pretty promising. It has dozens of flowers on it and several baby cucumbers are forming. The ‘White Wonder’ variety has a few more cucumbers forming as well.

Growing cucumbers has been an awesome experience this summer. From baby bunnies to extreme heat and humidity, it truly has been quite an interesting summer for cucumbers in the plot. 

Overall, growing cucumbers was a success in my book because I got to learn how to do it from beginning to end and I was able to harvest at least something, which I never thought I would be able to do! 

About the Author: Taylor Calavetinos recently graduated from the University of Maryland with a bachelor of arts in broadcast journalism. She is an intern with Washington Gardener.

About Fenton Friday: Every Friday during the growing season, I'll be giving you an update on my community garden plot at the Fenton Street Community Garden just across the street from my house in zone 7 Mid-Atlantic MD/DC border. I'm plot #16. It is a 10 ft x 20 ft space and this is our 8th year in the garden. (It opened in May 2011.) See past posts about our edible garden by putting "Fenton" into the Search box above.