Cucumber solutions

By Rennie Phillips

Last week I confessed my number one veggie or fruit was tomatoes. But a real close second happens to be cucumbers. In the summer I probably eat as many cucumbers as I do tomatoes. If I were to ask my dog Dutchess which is her favorite, the answer would be cucumbers by a long shot. I can offer her a slice of apple or a piece of cucumber and she'll go for the cucumber. She will sit and beg for cucumbers, but then she loves turnips as well.

Cucumbers come in all sizes and colors. A few years ago we grew some big yellow cucumbers. They were pretty but not really worth growing. They were seedy from the get go. We also grew some brown cucumbers. Not a lick better then the yellow ones. I guess I like the plain green cucumbers best of all.

Some of our friends don't peel their cucumbers. They eat the hides. Most of the time when one finds cucumbers on a food bar they will have the hides on them. I may eat a bite or two with the hides on, but when it gets down to it I almost always cut the hides off before I eat them. I also put a mix of Lawry's seasoning salt and other spices on my cucumbers. My brother in law makes a seasoning mix we call Gary's Mix and we put it on everything.

We grow a number of cucumbers every year. Our favorite eating cucumber is a Tasty Jade English style cucumber. Most of the these cuke s will be about 10 to 12 inches long and about 1 ¼ to 1 ½ inches in diameter. I always cut the hide off those that Dutchess and I eat. I normally hold the cuke on the stem end and simply cut from the blossom end down to where I'm holding the cuke. So we eat down to my fingers, which most of the time aren't the cleanest, and chuck the last inch or so.

For pickles we grow H19 Little Leaf cucumbers. They are a very small cucumber with a large one only being about 3 inches long. We also grow General Lee and Double Yield cucumbers. All three of these are almost ideal for making dill pickles. I usually plant 60 to 80 canning cucumber vines so that when we pick pickling cucumbers we will get enough from a single picking to can several quarts of dill pickles. The last few years we have been canning dill pickles in half gallon jars. They are ideal. But it takes a lot of small two to three inch pickles to fill a half gallon jar. Some popular cucumber varieties are Straight 8 and Marketmore. Both are good cucumbers.

All of our cucumbers are planted close to cattle panels or tomato cages. We then train our cucumber vines to grow up the panels or cages. Super easy to pick and easy to watch for diseases and bugs. By growing the Tasty Jade English cucumbers on a fence they hang straight down so most of the cukes are straight as an arrow. Most of the time I mulch around the vines which cuts down on weeds but also allows us to not have to water as much.

We try to grow burpless varieties as our large slicing cucumbers. As a general rule most of the big thin skinned cucumbers will be burpless while most of the small chunky cucumbers can't claim to be burpless.

A couple of my good friends mentioned that eating a cucumber causes them some serious stomach problems. I wondered why so after a bit of reading I found that the substance that causes us problems is known as cucurbitacin. Many times this substance called cucurbitacin will cause the cucumber to not only taste bitter but it will also cause us to have gas and stomach problems.

But according to the Oregon State University Extension Service most of the cucurbitacin is found in the stem end of the cucumber as well as the skin or hide. Marge's sister Rosemary said one time to make sure you cut enough off the stem end to get in to the seeds. Rosemary was right. By cutting enough off the stem end to get into the seeds one is getting rid of a good bit of the cucurbitacin in the cucumber. When we peel or slice off the skin or hide the deeper you cut the less cucurbitacin there will be.

Purdue University also did some studies on cucumbers and they found that stressers like too much or two little moisture causes stress which in turn causes the plant or vine to have more cucurbitacin. Another common stressor for cucumbers is excess heat or cold. We don't have the cold here in Missouri but we definitely have excess heat. Our goal as growers to to raise our cucumbers in a stress free environmant.

So in short, if you do have problems with eating cucumbers, try cutting off the stem end clear into the seeds. Also be sure to peel the cucumber and don't eat the peeling. I'm guessing but I'll bet soaking sliced cucumbers in salty water will help as well. Probably about the same as soaking sliced cucumbers in vinegar and salt. I'd also make sure the variety you grow or buy is a burpless variety.

Cucumbers can't take frost or real cold so it's best to wait till warmer weather to plant them. I start almost all of my cucumbers inside and then transplant when they are big enough.

Happy gardening.