Cucumbers this year were my “sort of a disaster” crop this year. Tomatoes were terrible last year, but great this year.
I grew three varieties this year that I started myself from seed. The past few years I’d gotten starts of “Super Slicing” or something from the Amish nursery. Lemon Cucumbers (the lemon shaped heirloom), Spring Burpless (Ferry-Morse seeds, supposedly like those long “English” cucumbers from the grocery store…it very much isn’t) and Armenian (Burpee seeds, supposed to be the very long, thin, light green cucumbers.
I grew them up a trellis I made from two 7’ U-posts with twine running back and forth every 4-6" which for getting the plants off the ground worked well enough.
Lemon cucumbers I’d heard people say were mostly a novelty “try growing them once” sort of crop. I’d tend to agree with that. They’re spiny as shit compared to any other cucumber I’ve ever handled. And after I pulled out the two other varieties because those plants died back…they stopped producing fruit? There were a crapload of bees and probably a hundred flowers and like three dozen aborted tiny Lemon cucumbers. Are they actually self-fertile? Did the plant pick up a disease or something that would keep it growing, but prevent fruit set? It’s been hot (like 90F), but not super crazy, and I’ve been watering.
Spring Burpless (Ferry-Morse seeds) after seeing the results I looked at the reviews on the two big box stores and found other people had the same results going back five years. The package and other websites apparently selling the same variety show the long, dark green, slightly ribbed, thin skinned “English” cucumbers like you’d find at the store. The cucumbers the plant grows look like large pickling cucumbers. Half of those were disgustingly bitter. Which might have been from heat stress? The ones that tasted OK had HUGE seeds even when they weren’t picked super late. I don’t mind this that much, but a half-inedible crop, that wasn’t what I thought I was buying, makes it a dud.
Armenian cucumber (Burpee seeds) I think I only got two cucumbers from the two plants, they were OK, but had kind of thick skin. They were also not particularly long, and the skin was mostly dark green striated. So not really what I was expecting. Edible in the limited quantities I got, at least.
Not liking the other two I started more Armenian ones. The first batch either got eaten or something and didn’t come up after a week, so I started some indoors and massively overplanted outside. Those are coming up now, so hopefully I can still get a super late harvest before frost.