All About Pickling Cucumbers

Compact varieties grow fast in almost any amount of space, in this article you’ll learn how to select, plant, water, and use this versatile vegetable without pickling them.

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by Cass PetersonJune 1999from issue # 21

My Aunt Eleanor was a great one for kettle of fish . She maintained a large patch of picklingcucumbers , which it was often my duty to pick . The patch was a sea of cucumber vine vines into which I go barefoot , feel with my toes for the yield hidden amid a snarl of stem and parting , every trip-up filling the airwave with the scent of crushedcucumber .

A 10 - hour treasure William Holman Hunt was usually enough to fill a two - gallon pail , and I took my wages in a brace of fresh Cucumis sativus — one to feed and one to hack unfastened and rub on legs itching from the flora ’ spinyfoliage . cucumber are soothing , in spite of appearance and out .

Aunt Eleanor had the space to featherbed her love of pickles , but you could enjoy the crunchy good of just - blame cucumbers without surrender the entire garden to their rearing vine . Hybridizers have been busy make cucumber plants more compact , as well as more productive and more immune to disease . Picklers are prolific and quick to produce , with some varieties bearing in as little as 45 day .

Picklers for compaction and eye appealThe first picklers were selections from the original cucumbers , and all of them were lanky of vine and stingy of fruit , like the dreadful and barbed West Native American gherkin . But even back in the mid-19th century , when New England horticulturist Fearing Burr was cataloguing them , picklers had been tamed to vine length of 10 infantry or so . Modern varieties are a third to a half inadequate and have more flowers along the vine as well .

You do n’t have to pickle picklers . Harvested untried , when the seed cavities are small , any variety of pickler is fine for fresh eating — in a salad or out of hand . Pickler varieties are n’t uniformly dark green like the slice - type cuke sold in the supermarket . They are paler green , sometimes with unclouded - colored stripes running longways down the yield . Picklers have thinner skin and crisper , crunchier physical body than most slicer . A few works will be enough to keep you in impudent cukes .

Catalog description of vining habits are n’t always useful . The word “ vigorous ” is often used to indicate expectant flowering and fruiting , rather than rearing vine . You wo n’t really have intercourse their habit until you try them , but in ecumenical , the young hybrids , which means picklers as well as standard cuke , tend to have shorter vines . In my garden , ‘ Calypso bulbosa ’ , ‘ Royal ’ , and ‘ H-19 Little Leaf ’ , comparatively Modern introduction in the pickler category , will jaunt 4 to 6 feet , but you could flex the vines back on themselves if they rove too far . ‘ Pickalot ’ and ‘ National Pickling ’ , venerable varieties , will travel a good 8 to 10 foot from where they ’re planted , but they , too , can be trained to climb over themselves .

There are gnome multifariousness — include ‘ Bush Pickle Hybrid ’ , which has vine just 18 inches long — that are suitable for grow in small spaces or even in container . Cucumber vines are attractive enough that a green goddess of them would n’t reckon out of place on the terrace . ‘ H-19 Little Leaf ’ is a particularly good candidate , with its ivylike foliage and clouds of yellow efflorescence .

cuke have apprehend tendrils and willingly hale themselves up a fencing or treillage . If you have limited space but want to grow one of the stock - size pickling hybrids like ‘ Calypso ’ or ‘ Royal ’ , consider raise them vertically .

The history behind caustic cucumbers

Cucumbers originate in India , where they have been cultivated for more than 3,000 years . uncivilised ancestors of the yield , however , were part of the human dieting long before that . Excavations on the Burma - Thailand border found cucumber vine seeds among the stiff of meals eaten around 9750 b.c.e .

Pickling was invent early , too , possibly because the ancients chance upon that soak cucumbers in saltwater ingest the vitriolic sharpness off the relish of the fruit . At the clock time of the pharaohs , Egyptians ate brine - dip cucumbers at every meal .

Those early cucumbers were belike more closely related to to the West Amerind gherkin ( Cucumis anguria ) than to the juicier , sweeter cucumber ( C. sativus ) that modernistic gardeners plant .

Nutritionally , cucumbers are n’t much to publish home about . The yield is 96 percent piss and moderate only a modest amount of vitamin A and C , with most of that establish in the peel . That ’s why one of my favourite is ‘ fairy-slipper ’ . Because it ’s dark dark-green , whereas many picklers are paler , it fools me into believe I ’m get nutrition where I ’m not .

The pee content gives cucumbers their cool reputationThe other Romans believed that sleeping on a seam of cukes would cure a feverishness . That may be a bit far - fetched , but the succulent yield is a surefire thirst - quencher . Many a sunbaked nurseryman has found nimble sculptural relief in the cuke patch without the necessity of heading to the kitchen for a glass of water .

Unless , of course , the nurseryman happens to grab a bitter cuke . cucumber vine bring about natural compounds squall cucurbitacins , which are responsible for the rancour that sometimes develop in the skin . Cucurbitacins at in high spirits level can have abdomen distraint , and in any casing they give the cucumber a strongly bitter smell . estrus and water system stress can increase cucurbitacin levels to the point where the cucumber must be peeled to be palatable .

some one in five mass ca n’t smack cucurbitacins , and so have never eaten a bitter cucumber . But twice that many people are hypersensitive to the virulent taste , which is why plant breeder have been working to reduce the level of the compound that cucumbers produce . The result is so - shout out burpless cucumbers , engender to produce fewer cucurbitacins .

How to deal with a pesky pestThe cucumber beetle , 1⁄5 inch long , either spotted or foray , is the worst opposition of cucumbers , especially in the Midwest and East . It is attracted to the odor of cucurbitacins , which are produce by cucumbers , squashes , melons , and other cucurbit .

Adult beetles feed on heyday and foliation ; their larvae provender on roots . bad , the beetle may taint the plant with a disease called bacterial wilt , which deflect the flow of water system through the industrial plant ’s stalk . Cucumbers are especially susceptible to bacterial wilt , for which there is no curative . septic plants will droop and die within days .

A few cucumber vine beetles in the patch is n’t a guarantee of bacterial wilt . The beetle must first pick up the disease bacterium , usually from weeds that may not show symptom of the disease . But the danger of wilt is always there if the cucumber mallet is present .

pickling cucumbers

Picking cucumbers make for teriffic eating straight out of the garden or chilled in a salad.Photo/Illustration: Janet Jemmott

Young plant are the most susceptible to stripy cucumber beetle wrong . Once a plant life has spring up at least three pairs of true leaves , it can tolerate considerable damage to its foliage without reducing take . you may protect immature plants from cucumber beetles with a polyester row cover , but finally it must be removed to let bee and other insects cross-pollinate the bloom .

My defense against beetle and bacterial wilt disease is to plant cucumbers several times a twelvemonth . If the plant are protected until they need pollination , chance are they will produce a seemly harvest before the wilt strikes , if it strikes at all . plant sequent crop a few calendar week apart assures me of new cucumbers all time of year long , even if the beetle do in one or more of the plantings . ( For more on managing these blighter , seeControlling Cucumber Beetles ) .

Cucurbitacin lures

dwarf pickling cucumbers

Cucurbitacins , the bitter chemical substance chemical compound find in cucumbers and other members of the squash family , pose complex issues for plant breeders and those trying to fend off pests . They are resistless to cucumber beetle , which home in on the cucurbitacin scent to receive the plants they get it on to eat . In test , cucurbitacins laced with insecticide have been used to tempt cuke beetle to their doom . It ’s a fleck like being done in by a craving for chocolate .

Although the cucurbitacin compounds attract Cucumis sativus beetle , they also act as as a natural pesticide , repelling or killing many other insects .

Burpless cucumber vine change produce few of the cucurbitacins people do n’t want to taste , but be given to attract more dirt ball pests , such as aphids and spider mite . On the other hand , burpless variety show may be less susceptible to harm from the cucumber mallet .

row cover

Meanwhile cucurbitacin lures are part of the growing field ofIntegrated Pest Management . Although some twist remain , such as how best to deliver the chemical compound , what has function in inquiry may one day be the salvation of home garden cukes , too .

Cucumber fertilityTo be certain I get the most from each planting , I like to plant gynodioecious varieties like ‘ Calypso bulbosa ’ and ‘ Royal ’ . Cucumbers are naturally monecious , which means that they have manful and distaff flowers on the same works . Gynodioecious varieties produce only distaff flower , which makes them open of producing nearly twice the number of fruits as monoecious change , because only female prime create yield .

You will require a few male heyday to provide pollen . come fellowship take precaution of this by let in in the parcel a few seeds of a monecious variety show , which are commonly dye a intense color so you may be indisputable to plant a few along with your gynodioecious cuke .

pickling cucumbers

There ’s another socio-economic class of cucumber vine : parthenocarpic varieties , which require no pollenation and acquire seedless yield . Most of the usable parthenocarpic cucumbers are slicers , but a new cornichon pickler mixed bag call ‘ Cool Breeze ’ is both parthenocarpic and burpless .

Parthenocarpic cucumbers are a mo trickier to mature than gynodioecious varieties because they must be carefully protect from prospect pollination by other cucumbers or by wild relatives . But they can be left covered to exclude cucumber beetles right up until harvest meter , a blessing for beetle - plagued areas .

Seed catalogs generally report pickle cucumber varieties as either ashen - spin around or dark - spined , touch to the colour of the splenetic spines , which rub off easy . It really does n’t make any remainder which you get . whitened - spined varieties will ripen livid , and dark - spined will ripen yellow , but at that stage the cucumber is over the hill anyway .

‘Calypso’ cucumber

cucumber want warm , tender soilCucumbers are strong - weather plants , and will sprout readily if sown directly into lovesome territory . you may gain a footling time on the season by starting the plants indoors , but be forewarned that cucumbers , like all cucurbits , begrudge have their root interrupt . If you choose to use seedlings rather than germ , start them in peat pots no rather than three weeks before you intend to plant them outdoors and graft cautiously to avoid rootage harm .

Sow two or three seeds together , in the ground or in a peat pot , and let the young plant grow up together . No need to slim down them out .

Cucumbers like a light , fertile soil . If your garden has heavy clay grime , lighten it up with compost or peat before attempting cucumbers . salutary compost also will supply the steady supplying of nutrients that cucumbers need . If you use commercial , granulated fertilizer , fuse a generous handful into the soil at planting and sidedress at least once during the season .

‘Calypso’ cucumber

Adequate wet is criticalCucumbers need a deep souse once a week , at a lower limit . Mulching is a beneficial mind , too . It will aid prevent the soil from dry out out between waterings , and it will keep weeds down . This is crucial for cucumber , because draw out weeds by hand or cultivating with a hoe might damage those sensitive solution .

start out harvesting pickler cucumber when they are 2 to 3 inches long , and do n’t permit the yield uprise to more than 4 or 5 inches long . Picklers tend to flabbiness in the centre when allowed to get too giving . None is in particular long - lived in the fridge . They respire through their skins and get wrinkly , hence the supermarket cuke with its protective coat of wax or shrink - wrapper . A week or so is top computer memory time .

As Aunt Eleanor knew well , frequent picking will keep the plant fertile longer . You may even do this barefoot .

Dwarf cucumbers

When ready with cucumbers , extract the water first the kitchenWhen using pickler cucumbers in recipes such asCucumber and Noodle Salad with Satay Dressing , Mediterranean Cucumber Salad , andCucumber and Yogurt Raita , you will desire to extract some of the weewee so the dishes do n’t wrench out soggy . So peel off the Cucumis sativus , thin them into the pattern you need , salt them , and place them in a cullender . allow them run out for about a half hour and dab them wry — if they ’re grated , squelch lightly first . Then carry on with the recipe . This makes the cucumber vine dishes saltier , so do n’t bring salt until you ’ve tasted .

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Pickling cucumbers

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