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Vegetable Gardening

Cucumber flower pruning

9 years ago

Hi,

I am growing a Garden Sweet Burpless Cucumber (seeds from Burpee) and I'm wondering if someone could help me with pruning the flowers.

For some reason, I haven't seen any male flowers on the main vine... only female ones (with the fruit on its back). It's beginning to flower one by one but with no male flowers to pollinate... The side vines aren't developed with no other male flowers in sight. Should I pick these female flowers off until I see at least one male flower?

I heard that there are seedless varieties with mostly female flowers that fruit on its own (don't really understand how that works...) but i am not sure if that's the case with this one.

if someone has any advice with this variety or just cucumbers in general... that would be great.

thanks!

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Comments (4)

theforgottenone1013 (SE MI zone 5b/6a)
9 years ago
"I heard that there are seedless varieties with mostly female flowers that fruit on its own (don't really understand how that works...) but i am not sure if that's the case with this one."

You are referring to parthenocarpic varieties. They don't need pollinated to set fruit. I don't think the one you are growing is parthenocarpic though. And taking off the female flowers won't do much of anything. They will fall off on their own if they aren't pollinated.

Rodney
ltilton
9 years ago
There are indeed gynoecious cucumber varieties that are bred to have all-female flowers, and they must be planted with a variety that has males. A lot of trouble has been caused by retail sellers who fail to make this clear to their customers.

I don't know if your variety is one of these.
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Most likely it suffered some set-back stress from the transplanting as cukes aren't famous for their toleration of transplanting. When under stress, plants sometimes won't produce female blooms because the plant, out of a desire to survive, knows it can't handle the additional stress of fruit production. And if it does produce them they just die and fall off anyway. Smart plants. ;) Once it adjusts to the new environment and assuming it now has room to grow and proper nutrients and proper amounts of water without over-watering, it will start producing females. Patience and gardening go hand in hand. Dave
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Susan2010- I have had mixed opinions. From what I heard, removing the first few buds is supposed to put the plant's energy back into growing the root system/branches/vines, so that it will eventually double your crop. Since there becomes more space on more greenery, you get more blooms and stronger support. Then, the suckers "suck" the energy from the fruit once they start to produce, supposidly. I have also been told though, that if you do it incorrectly or at the wrong time, you will just be removing half your crop! So thats my delema since I dont know the correct way :) sjkly- yes, I am in shock how quick! Especially compared to my other plants. Your right..I dont think I have seen any females, so I guess I wouldn't be losing any real fruit lol. I heard males make the fruit thick and bitter tho- anyone know if this is true? seems odd. donnabaskets- thanks, I hope I am doing everything :) I do have somewhat of a home made (kinda ghetto) trellis. I raised the bucket onto a chair so it could run downward instead of up. I had some old fencing I've propped up so it has some support under the vines on it's way down.
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JarredO
Original Author
9 years ago
Thanks for the follow-ups. I'm still not certain, but some are what you mentioned, a gynoecious cucumber... I have a couple of vines that are completely female, some completely male, and a few that are mixed... its very confusing. I checked the leftover seeds, but they all look completely identical to me... but it was interesting to learn of all these different types of cucumber plants.
yolos - 8a Ga. Brooks
9 years ago
I grew some Persian Cucumbers, Baby from Botanical Interests. They are parthenocarpic, and are genoecious but do not require a pollinator or pollination to set fruit. All female flowers, no male flowers. Every leaf node contained a female flower that produced a good cucumber.

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