Climbing Cucumbers

Space in a backyard garden is often tight and if not, then weeding can become another incentive to keeping things tighter.  Training things up is a productive way to optimize space. 

Cucumbers really do well climbing.  When trained up a trellis or twine I can keep a close eye on what they’re up to and control their output.  I haven’t yet perfected pickling cukes but I’ve managed to do quite well with slicers.

For years I’ve grown my cucumbers in a single 4 foot row across a bed of maybe 4 plants.  My old standby has been Marketmore 76.  It was one of the earlier releases that were ‘bitter free’ and was productive, thicker skinned, digestible and very mild tasting.  Plus it was open pollinated so I could save my own seed.

I’d drive two 6 foot high stakes at the ends of the short row, with a cross piece across the top with about ten pieces of twine hanging down.  Up these I’d train 8 to 10 leaders from the 4 plants and pick cukes for a modestly short period.  Every time it became a mess of vines and side shoots and it was finicky in its production and I had a hard time maintaining it.  There were either lost, oversized cukes in the mess that stopped the vines from producing anymore or too many leaders competing for space and light.

Last year, with my new roomier greenhouse, I used my north east corner to grow just a pair of cucumber climbers.  The production levels were astounding.  My son, The Organic Grower (TOG), gave me one Socrates cucumber plant and I had started a few Marketmores as well.  His Socrates was more of a greenhouse plant and he said the seeds were almost 50 cents a piece, so I followed his careful instructions on how to train it. 

The resulting crop from mid-June to the beginning of October gave me 58 Socrates and 38 Marketmores.  At an average of half a pound each, that gave me 48 lbs of cukes from 8 square feet of space.  We supplied my mom and others with slicing cucumbers.  My Lovely Wife even managed to put up some excellent bread and butter pickles.  Using our surplus of sweet red peppers and large onions, she pickled five jars at a time.

 

This year I begged two Socrates seeds from TOG (which he probably got from Osborne Seed Company in Mount Vernon WA) and started those and a few Marketmore 76 seeds (from Westcoast Seeds) under indoor grow lights on April 15.  Once the weather warmed up, their pots made it into the greenhouse and on May 24^th. I transplanted one of each into the bed in the greenhouse.

TOG had directed I leave only one leader to develop for each plant.  The Marketmore could be wound around its twine that was hung from the rafter and it would support itself, but the Socrates needed to be tomato clipped onto its twine just like I do my tomatoes.  Also, the first 3 or 4 infant cucumbers needed to be removed from the young plant to give it a good start.  After that I just keep on removing each young runner / leader that wants to start at each leaf node.  This is much easier to maintain than a mass of leaders from multiple plants.

 

This year my first Socrates ripened June 28^th.  (we’ve had a cloudier June).

 

 The Marketmore is later and should start in two or three weeks.  Once the plants reach the greenhouse ceiling, I can direct them across the roof line or down another twine.  If another shoot shows up from lower down, I can deadhead the original leader and raise the new shoot as the new leader.

This year’s watering for that one bed in the greenhouse is an experiment with drip irrigation.  This should keep the foliage nicely dry and hopefully less chance of viruses or wilts.

Happy Gardening.