Well, I'm not a cucumber expert, by any means. But I generally succeed, and I do produce my own seed. The reason your seed flattens out (and may or may not germinate) is that you are not leaving it to mature, in the fruit, long enough. I've had this happen before. But now I leave the cucumbers on the vine until they are REALLY dark orange and rough skinned. There is probably a difference between varieties, as the color, but the key is to leave them on the vine several weeks longer than what one would normally think. Currently I have about a quart of cucumber seeds and pulp, fermenting on our kitchen counter. I need to move it out to our shop PRONTO, or the wife may throw it out on me!

Cucumber seed needs warmth to germinate properly. Did you plant yours when it was still real cool?

Though I doubt it makes any difference, I thought I'd mention that the Armenian cucumber is actually a melon. It won't cross with your other cucumber, but it will cross with cantaloupe. So beware.

Sometimes when people start plants in paper pots they make the mistake of leaving some of the paper, from the pot, above ground, when they transplant into the garden. The paper wicks moisture away from the young plant and kills it. Perhaps this is what happened.

The reason your cucs are misshapen is probably either a pollination issue or else some insect is biting them when they are young. Why the vines dies like that? I'm not sure. Could it be that they had real irregular moisture?

Hope this helps!

George
Tahlequah, OK

Ilene,

I am not a cucumber expert either, and I do agree with everything George said and can't think of much to add.

As far as favorites, I like "Homemade Pickles" and "Picklebush" and "Lemon Cucumber" as well. Honestly, though, I don't find a lot of variation in flavor from one cuke to the next.

The only think I have to add to what George told you is that cucumbers are VERY unhappy if the seed or plants are subjected to soil temperatures lower than 60 degrees even for a short while. If you plant when it is too cold, the seeds (or seedlings, if you use transplants) may grow, but they'll never do well and won't produce a good crop. So, I play it safe and plant cucumbers late....after soil temperatures are in the 70s.

Regarding the pollination issues, if you don't have bees, you can hand-pollinate.

And, regarding the issue of the plants dying suddenly, with cukes it is usually damping off while the plants are fairly small....or cutworms. Or, if your soil pH is too low (below 6), they may grow very slowly and die.

I'm inclined to think excessive soil moisture, which you can't do anything about, may have been an issue this year too.

Dawn

I am CERTAINLY no expert, but cucumbers were different this year. I normally have so many that I can't use them all. I didn't have any trouble with them coming up this year, but I had vines die that looked healthy and would produce one or two cukes, then just die. I had never had that happen before. I, like George said above, had always thought that cucumber seed had to dry out. I thought little of throwing some overgrown cukes in the back of my flower bed to decompose this summer. One day I went out and found vines growing all through my day lillies. So much for only dry seed will sprout. I also had a lot of volunteers in my garden where I had left some large ones last year. If they dried, they did it inside the whole cucumber. I think this was just not a good year for cukes.

This was one of the best cucumber years ever here, and we were hot and dry (as y'all know from my endless whining about the lack of rainfall). Are the two related? I don't know. My cukes were at their best in July which was after the rains had stopped, so maybe they do better with rain early on (as they are growing but not yet blooming and fruiting?) and drier weather later.

Some years the cukes do great and some years only so-so, but I've never paid a lot of attention to which years they are great and which years they aren't, so I can't really say if it is weather-related or not. I did notice that I didn't have many cucumber beetles at all this year either, and that probably helped since they vector disease.

Carol, I thought cucumber seeds had to be dry to sprout too! I do know, though, that occasionally a tomato plant will sprout from a seed INSIDE a red, ripe tomato. I've seen photos of plants growing right out of the middle of a tomato. I've also cut into tomatoes once or twice and found sprouted seeds right there in the seed locule.

Dawn

I have another strange tale this year. I had thought that I would plant some squash in the garden but never did that because of the condition of my garden. Instead, I planted four in pots. Two didn't live very long and produced only one small fruit. I had squash bugs everywhere, I picked off a lot but could never get them all. The other two plants were zucchini and I thought since they are always so productive, that they would probably provide all we could eat. I gave up on one a week or so ago and dumped it out, but the other is not pretty but is still alive, still has green healthy looking leaves, has bloomed many times, and never made one fruit. I have never had that happen before.

Carol,

Did they flower? If they flowered and didn't produce any zukes after that, then I'm inclined to think it was a pollination problem. And, since y'all were cool and cloudy (and rainy) so much, that is not surprising since bees are much less active in that kind of weather. You can hand-pollinate by transferring the pollen from the male flowers to the female flowers using a small brush.

Also, like cukes, zukes are sensitive to cool weather and may not do well (will survive, but not produce) if subjected to cool soil temperatures early in their growth.
Have you had bees around? The similar problems with zukes and cukes not producing makes me think the primary problem has got to be a lack of pollinators.

Dawn

Thanks for all this good advice.

Dawn, I had the cukes planted on the same trellis with my yard-long beans along the edge of the raised beds, the trellis that is made of a stock panel that is arched over the walk-way between two raised beds. I know that a few times over the summer it did get kind of dry there. I watered several times through the month of July and August as we didn't get much rain after having such an abundanza during the spring. So maybe they got too dry, like you said. Next year I'll plant them at ground level. Those raised beds are wonderful when we're getting lots of rain, but they dry out so fast when we're not that it's a pain to keep everything watered. We went to Atwoods and got one of those big sprayer tanks that people carry around in the back of their trucks. It's too late for this year, and anyway DH is still recovering from knee surgery on his second knee, but next summer I'm collecting water that comes out of the roof guttering drain. I grow a garden to save money on food, primarily, and when my water bill goes up because I've been watering the garden, that cuts into my bottom line.

George, Thanks for the tip about Armenian cucumber being a melon. I didn't know that! When I plant newspaper pots I always tear the "collar" off. It's always a little drier already than the part that's touching growing medium so it's easy to do this and I had heard about the wicking problem. Sometimes, though, the newspaper pot then falls apart in my hand so this is a process that must be done carefully! I left the Homemade Pickle cukes on the vine till they started turning orange, but the vine started to wither at about that time so maybe that's why my seed doesn't look so good. I didn't know if the vine was withering because I had left that cuke on, or if the cuke was turning orange because the vine was withering or if neither was a cause. I got some Armenian cucumber seed in a trade once that was flat and empty-looking and none of it germinated, so I just assumed if the seeds were not plumped out once they were dry that there was nothing in there. From your post I gather that's not necessarily true then?

Carol, that IS perplexing about your squash. I had a lot of squash bugs this year too, and all I grew in the squash family were some volunteer spaghetti squash. On zucchini, though, aren't there male and female flowers, and doesn't the male flower just fall off and not make anything? Could the flowers you mentioned have been those? Myself, I don't know the difference between them, but I have noticed almost every year that I have squash that some of the flowers do just die off. I've also seen that with gourd plants. Something else that I've seen fairly often with squash and gourds is that there will actually be a small fruit that will form and then it will stop growing and start to grow mold, and then fall off, unless I break it off ahead of time. I haven't found this to affect the rest of the plant, but it is kind of disappointing when the plant is just starting out. I get so excited when a plant starts to set on fruit. I'm easily entertained.

I'm thinking about Spacemaster 80 or Straight Eight for next year. Anyone have opinions about either? --Ilene

Ilene,

I feel the same way about watering the veggie garden too much--it turns my homegrown veggies into some expensive homegrown veggies! Next year, I'm going to go with a lot more cool season veggies and a lot fewer warm season veggies, and I am going to concentrate my warm season veggies in a separate area from the cool season ones, so I can maybe water just a portion of the graden in the hot, dry weather and still get some warm-season veggies without busting the budget. Since we tend to get good spring rain, maybe I can happily grow more cool season stuff before the usual summer drought arrives.

Female veggie flowers and male flowers can be distinguished from one another quite easily. The male flowers appear first and in great quantity and just look like normal flowers. Sometimes you'll have several dozen of them before a female flower appears. (This is a 'survival' technique to ensure the female flowers have lots of available pollen when they bloom.)

When the female flower arrives, you'll see a little bulge directly behind the flower petals and it looks like a tiny green cuke, zuke, squash etc. This small and immature fruit will enlarge and become the mature veggie (fruit). If no pollen transfers from the male flower to the female flower within a certain number of days, then the female flower and its' little immature fruit falls off the plant. Once the female flowers start appearing, you usually have new ones day after day.

As far as Spacemaster 80, I haven't grown it but think it was bred from Marketmore, which is tasy, reliable and handles heat well. Straight Eight is an oldie but a goodie. It tastes great and makes large, pretty cukes. Both are slicers, so not so great for making pickles if you want pickles. One thing about any of the ones born to be dwarf for containers (like Spacemaster) is that, to me, they seem to produce only about half as long as larger plants. So, you get your cukes early and then production slows down or stops. Possibly this is just because the vines are smaller. Succession plantings are more important if you grow any of the dwarf types like Spacemaster, Picklebush, etc. if you want cukes over a prolonged time period.

I'll find a photo of a female flower and link it below.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Photos of male and female cucumber flower

Sometimes thin seed will germinate, at least within the coming year. But it has terrible longetivity. My seed, this year, came out great. I left the cucs on the vine for nearly a month after they turned orange. Now, only a couple days after that, there are more orange cukes out there. But I wouldn't consider them ready for ripe seed without waiting several weeks more. I wait until I'm afraid they'll rot, then I pick them.

I've had the same thing happen with squash seed. Even after the fruit tests ripe, I leave my seed in it for at least a month. Then I process it. The seed derives strength from the fruit for some time after maturity.

I've had a couple of not very good years with cukes. So, this year I planted an entire cattle panel with them, planning to do a late summer planting as well. Well, the first planting is only now dying down. We've had, probably, hundreds of pounds of cucumbers!

I grow Chicago Pickling, an heirloom from the 1800s. But as was mentioned above, I don't find much difference in flavor from one cucumber to another. I'm mainly interested in pickling; don't believe anyone in the family ate one raw, yet this year. Raw cucumber is one of the only things I can't eat. Tastes good going down, but gives me indigestion.

George