Melon en Surprise was Auguste Escoffier's title for a five line description of a tasty combination of melons and other fresh fruits in his 1903 masterpiece Le Guide Culinaire. Of course, Escoffier was working from the notes and techniques of...

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Cucumbers Growing Problems: Troubleshooting

Cumcumbers for slicing and salads. Cucumbers for pickling. Burpless cucumbers for eating out of hand. Cucumbers for containers. Give cucumbers the right conditions and they will be one of your top producing garden crops.

To keep ahead of cucumber problems, pests and diseases, here is a troubleshooting list of possible cucumber problems with brief control suggestions. (For a full description of pests and diseases and prevention and controls click over to the Pest Problem Solver or to the Disease Problem Solver. For cucumber growing details click to How to Grow Cucumbers.)

Plants are eaten or cut off near soil level. Cutworms are gray grubs ½- to ¾-inch long that can be found curled under the soil. They chew stems, roots, and leaves. Place a 3-inch paper collar around the stem of the plant. Keep the garden free of weeds; sprinkle wood ash around base of plants.

Small plants turn yellow and break off. Southern corn rootworm is the larvae of the spotted cucumber beetle (See below). Cultivate the soil before planting to expose larvae and interrupt the insect's life cycle.

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Cucumber Varieties: Best Bets and Easy-to-Grow

Here are 20 top-performing cucumbers for the home garden divided into 5 popular cucumber types: (1) slicing, (2) pickling, (3) burpless, and (4) space savers for small gardens and containers,

(Keep reading to the bottom of this post for my tips for sure-fired cucumber growing success. Also see more at How to Grow Cucumbers and the Cucumber Archive.)

Slicing Cucumbers:

• Dasher II. 55-60 days. CMV, DM, PM, S. Cool, crisp flesh and great flavor. Slim dark-green fruit, 8½ inches long 2¼ inches across. Standard slicing fruit. Compact heavy yielding plants. Hybrid.

• Greensleeves. 53 days. Excellent for salads and slicing. Dark-green, cylindrical fruit to 8½ inches long; uniform size, slightly tapered; small seed cavity. Good yield in home garden on vigorous vines. Responds well to touch conditions. Early maturing. Gyonecious, mostly female flowers.

• Marketmore 76. 58 days. ALS, AN, CMV, DM, S. Standard slicing fruit, uniform size, long and slender. Dark green fruit, 8 to 9 inches long; white spined; has uniform dark green color gene which reduces the number of yellow bellies at harvest time. Very good in home gardens. Open-pollinated.

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How to Grow Cucumber

Cucumber is a tender annual that grows best in temperatures ranging from 60° to 90°F. Sow cucumber seed in the garden after the soil has warmed, 3 to 4 weeks after the average last frost date in spring. Sow cucumber seed indoors as early as 6 weeks before transplanting into the garden. Cucumbers require 55 to 65 frost-free days from sowing to reach harvest.

Prepare and serve cucumbers: click here.

Description. Cucumber is a weak-stemmed tender annual that grows 8 to 12 inches tall and sprawl on the ground or up over small trellises or supports. Leaves are somewhat heart shaped with rough margins; leaves and stems are covered with prickly short hairs. Fowers are yellow. Fruit is commonly pale or dark green but some varieties are yellow or white; fruit ranges in size from 3 inches to more than 24 inches long.

Most cucumbers are monoecious, meaning plants produce both female and male flowers. Female flowers are commonly pollinated by insects after visiting male flowers.

Newer cucumber varieties are gynoecious producing only female flowers. These plants must be set near a monoecious plant for pollination or must be pollinated by hand. Gynoecious cultivars include 'Conquest,' 'Early Pride,' and 'Bush Baby.'

• Cucumber varieties include bush or vining plants; vining cultivars require more space but produce more fruit.

• Pickling cucumbers have thin, pale green skin, bear fruit early, and concentrate fruiting in a 10 days period.

• Slicing cucumbers, for fresh eating, commonly are green skinned and set fruit for 4 to 6 weeks. Slicing cucumbers include "burpless' cultivars which are mild flavored and easy to digest.

• European, English, or greenhouse cucumbers are seedless cultivars developed for greenhouse growing.

• Lemon cucumbers are yellow oval-to-round heirloom cucumbers.

• Asian cucumbers are thin, heavily ribbed cultivars that grow from 12- to 24-inches long.

• Gherkin is a term used for any pickling cucumber; however, a true gherkin is not a cucumber but the fruit of a different species, Cucumis anguria.

• Cornichons is the generic French term for any small cucumber.

Yield. Grow 2 to 3 cucumber plants per household member for fresh eating. Grow 3 to 4 plants per quart for pickling.

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Cucumber Growing

Slicing cucumbers and pickling cucumbers: that’s how cucumbers are divided. It is said that the ancient Roman Emperor Tiberius demanded cucumbers on his table every day of the year. The story does not say if they were slicing or pickling cucumbers; maybe both.

The English or Holland or European cucumber are thick meated and seedless; the Armenian cucumber or Syrian or Turkish cucumber are pale green and curled; the lemon cucumber is shaped like a lemon and yellow: they are slicing cucumbers. Pickling cucumbers include the small West Indian Gherkin and the larger National Pickling.

“Cool as a cucumber” means you are about 20 degrees cooler than the outside air on a warm day, that is if you are a cucumber. That is said to be a scientific fact. For the kitchen gardener, “cool as a cucumber” may simply mean keeping cool in the face of a lot of cucumbers at harvest time.Slicing cucumbers are usually eaten raw on sandwiches or salads but may be cooked—prepared like squash. Cucumbers can replace squash in most recipes.

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Two Cucumbers: ‘Diva’ and ‘Amira’

Can there actually be two “World’s Best Cucumber”?

To decide, taste ‘Diva’ and ‘Amira’ two very tasty slicing cucumbers.

‘Diva’ comes to the competition with all of the fanfare. In 2002, ‘Diva’ became an All-America Selection—which is a sort of growers’ Academy Award for best performing plants.

‘Amira’ has never taken home the All-America Selection award, but whenever you read or hear about ‘Amira’ the phrase “one of the best cucumbers” is close by.

Both ‘Diva’ and ‘Amira’ are fresh-eating cucumbers. That’s means you can slice them right onto a sandwich or salad moments after they come off the vine.

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Cucumbers

Start slicing the cucumbers!

The first local cucumbers of the season just appeared at our farm market this week, and the weather is cooperating—the temperatures in the Sonoma Valley bounced into the mid-80s almost every afternoon.

Sliced cucumbers, watercress, and thinly sliced green onions are the ingredients of a tasty warm-weather sandwich.

Or you can add minced cucumbers and dill to plain yogurt to make a cooling warm weather soup or snack.

Why do cucumbers and warm weather mix so well? Cucumbers are more than 90 percent water. There crunchy texture, sweet grassy fragrance, and cool, mild flavor are perfect matches for late spring and summer sandwiches and salads.

You can also steam and sauté cucumbers and enjoy them as a vegetable side dish.

The peak season for fresh-from-the-garden cucumbers is late spring through summer, May to August in the Northern Hemisphere.

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