4 Simple Secrets To Grow Cucumbers Like Crazy!

In this season's first episode, Jim and Mary walk listeners through the four simple steps to planting and growing cucumbers. See how with just a few simple tips and tricks, you can grow your best crop of cucumbers ever!

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Welcome to the Simple Garden Life Podcast, a program dedicated to keeping the yard
of gardening simple, fun and alwaysrewarding. Now Here are your hosts,
Jim and Mary Competti. Hello andwelcome everybody. I'm Jim Campetti along with
my wife Mary for our fourth podcastseason, starting back, and we are
back for the twenty twenty four season. Hard to believe this is year four?

(00:24):
Is it? That is? Imean, it's it's been crazy,
it's been fun and we love toget to the chance to talk to gardening.
We've got a lot of great episodescoming up this year. We're going
to kick it off with today,which is one of my favorite topics.
Cucumbers and how to best plant them. You know a lot of people just
think I'm going to take them out, put them in just like any other
plant. There are some differences andwe'll get into them today that can really

(00:45):
ensure a great crop of cucumbers andhow you plant them and how you go
about that, and we're going toget into that. But since it's the
first of the twenty twenty four season, we want to remind everybody that can
always reach us via email at theFarm at ow garden dot com. And
you can sign up at simplegardenlife dotcom to follow us on Facebook. That's
really the easiest way. We're goingto post all of our newest articles on

(01:07):
there. Any of the podcast comeson, So go to simplegardenlife dot com.
And then also you can check outour Old World Garden Farms YouTube channel
where this year we'll post a lotmore garden videos. We're adding some more
gardens here to the test garden,so pretty excited about that. So it's
a big year. It is goingto be a big year. We got
lots going on the farm. We'llhave an episode about the farm coming up
in a few weeks. We're excitedfor that when we've added a lot here

(01:30):
and we're gonna have a lot ofevents and the coming years, and really
excited when we get the chance tonot just talk guarding but live it here
with other people with the farm wedo. We get a lot of questions
from people about where the farm's locatedif they could come visit, so we're
excited to share it. Yeah,we are. So just to let you
know, we are in Quaker City, Ohio, so on the eastern part
of the middle section of Ohio.But like we said, well, that'll

(01:52):
be coming in a little bit.But let's get into our topic today,
which is planning and growing your bestcrop of cucumbers. It's really important planting
day. We talk about this withany crop, but with cucumbers it's huge,
and we're going to talk why andhow you should plant your cucumbers instead
of just what a lot of peopledo. We'll get into this with transplants,

(02:12):
right, And I think it's probablythe second most popular vegetable to put
in a garden. Well, itis, and for a lot of reasons.
I mean, think about all thethings that we make from our cucumbers
and yeah, I mean there's along, long list. Yeah, we
use our cucumbers all summer long.We can make so many different varieties of
pickles. We have dill pickles,hot and spicy pickles, bread and butter
pickles. We use the same thingsfor relishes. But my favorite thing to

(02:36):
use for cucumbers, besides putting themin a salad, eating them fresh fridge
all summer long. And I loveit too, it is a cucuvered onion
salad. Yeah you get that fromyour dad. I think your dad always
loved that and we had it too. But It's funny, Mary and I
have different versions. Now you likeboth, I do. I only like
one version. I like it withthe vinegar style. I'm not a creamy

(02:57):
You've made me come over a littlebit. I'll eat some, but I
have much more of that side.But we always have both. You do
a nice job when you're making itto make make sure we have each We
do, and I like that.I like the creamy sour cream mayonnaise version
that spice ups as cayenne pepper.But I do love the Italian viniagarette as
Oh yeah, it is good.So I mean as great as cucumbers are,
and Mary just talked about all theways you can use them. They

(03:19):
really are, along with tomatoes,one of the most frustrating crops for gardeners
to grow. And you know they'rejust cucumbers are notorious. They give gardeners
fits for all kinds of different reasons, you know, whether it's trying to
get young seasons to take off,or every year we get questions like I
have flowers on my cucumbers, butthey're not producing cucumbers. Well, we'll
talk about that today. That's frustratingtoo. You know, they are one

(03:40):
of the most finicky plants when itcomes to pest and disease too, whether
it's you know, cucumber blight,whether it's the beetle getting them. They
also can succumb to weather pretty quicklyin certain cases. But we're going to
start with what I think is probablyone of the most important things that when
you you plant your cucumbers. We'regoing to hit four huge things today,

(04:02):
four secrets that we say like togrow cucumbers like crazy. But number one,
before we get to it, Mary, it's the question we're going to
answer. I think it's our questionof the week, and I think it's
really important right now to just startwith that. Right. This comes from
Andy Flowers from Tulsa, Oklahoma.He writes, I have the worst luck
with cucumbers. It doesn't matter ifI try to grow my own transplants or

(04:23):
buy them. It always seem tojust sit in the soil and die every
year I plant them. Help.I always love that. I love the
hope. Yeah, we get alot of those, but it's good.
So number one and if, inmy opinion, the most important thing you
can do to grow better cucumbers isnot to plant transplants. Right, there's
no need to go out to anursery or start your own seeds indoors to

(04:46):
go and plant your cucumbers in yourgarden. I mean, not only is
it less expensive, but to helpyour plants stay healthier and grow stronger and
faster. And here's why. Youknow, unlike tomato and pepper plants that
have extremely long seed to you know, purity times, they can be eighty
ninety one hundred days or more,so you need to start them insight.
They're also a bit stronger of aplant when you first take them out.

(05:08):
Cucumbers are not that way, andthey have a very short seed to production
time. I mean some cucumbers,what fifty fifty to fifty five days they
can go from a seed to havingfresh cucumbers that you're picking exactly. So
because of that, you don't haveto start those plants four to six weeks,
as we always hear inside before takingthem out, because when you plant

(05:29):
seeds, they're going to come upso fast, they're going to produce so
fast you're going to have cucumbers.But here's the funny part that I always
like to talk about, we've donethis. This is not something that we
just say we've only planted from seedswe have planted for years. Yeah,
both we would go get transplants ifwe weren't here growing our own. Then
we grew our own, and wetoo struggled by taking them out. And

(05:50):
here's what happens with cucumber plants.You know, you have what maybe four
to six leaves, maybe ten ifyou're lucky on a cucumber transplant, you
take it out right, if you'relucky. If you're lucky, it's cool,
it's early in this growing season.Two things that cucumbers absolutely despise.
And you take them outside, evenif you harden them off, and you

(06:12):
plant them in the soil. Andwhat do they do? They sit?
They sit. Everybody talks about it. Right. They go through a bit
of shock, they do. Everyplant does. But unfortunately for cucumbers that
shock is brutal to them. Itcan just lead them to kind of wilt
over, and the only few leavesthey have in order to help with photosynthesis
and everything else, end up gettingdamaged. We've watched it before. They'll

(06:33):
turn yellow and you're not even it'snot because of water. Maybe there's too
much moistury and soil. Because it'scool. They can't dry off, and
mildew and blight and all of thosethings take effect when that cool wet soil,
and it just spells trouble for cucumberplants. It is. And the
easiest way to explain it is thatthe roots when they're in the warm soil
inside, when you put them outsidein the cool soil, they go through

(06:54):
a shock and they just sit thereand they don't grow. They do.
So here's our answer, and wehave done We've done experiment after experiment.
Now we just kind of laugh.You can take a transplant and put it
out, so we can usually planthere mid to late May. It just
depends. But we can plant thosetransplants and we can plant seeds on the
same day, or we can waita week later and plant seeds, and

(07:16):
without fail, by the middle ofJune. What happens. The seeds do
much better. They do. Andhere's here's why that happens. So,
first of all, the seeds goin the ground, they have a chance
to sprout, they are acclimated toeverything, and if you just wait a
little while till that soil warms up. That's the biggest mistake people make when

(07:38):
planting any type of spring vegetable croplike tomatoes, or when they're putting them
in for the summer, is theyplant too early. Let that soil temperature
heat up a little bit. It'sgoing to Germany quick. The seeds are
going to grow, there's no Theroots have never been disturbed, right,
and the soil really needs to notonly be warm, but needs to have
been dried out. If you hada really wet spring, the cucumber seeds

(07:59):
or transplants aren't going to do well. That's right. I mean, you
can't say that any better. Andthen once those seeds sprout up, those
roots have grown uninterrupted and they're downin there's not going to be the issues
that you have with a plant that'salready existed and it kind of gets weak
and you can't power it up.So number one, right off the bat,
with queue seeds grow with seeds.It is just an easier way.

(08:22):
Trust me, try the experience yourself. Go out and buy a plant,
put your seeds in beside it,and andy rot us today. I said,
try this and it will work.Seeds have always given us a much
better and longer lasting crop and ahealthier crop. So that's number one.
Let's take now a look at numbertwo and you kind of hinted to this,
it's great soil. It's all aboutgiving your cucumbers what they want.

(08:46):
And I mean, what's the biggestmistake a lot of gardeners make with cucumbers
is not amending the soil. Right. You have to provide some nutrients to
let those cucumbers grow big and strong, that's right, Rich, fertile and
loose soil, and that allows themto grow extensive roots. If that's soil
is hard or it doesn't have nutrientsin, those roots can't grow anywhere.
Even if it's a seed, theycan't get out. But if you have
good soil to start with, thoseroots grow out. And what does a

(09:09):
big root system do. It absorbsmore nutrients. Right. And think about
the soil that you see that hascracks in it, hard soil, you
don't want that. You want loose, fertile soil, that's right. And
then the other thing is always plantyour cucumbers even if you grow in a
bucket, if you grow in araised bed, if you grow anywhere,
make a little bit of a moundwherever your plant comes out. And that's

(09:31):
important for the biggest reason is cucumbersdon't do well when there's a lot of
moisture right around their stem. That'swhat happens in the early spring when you
put those transplants, and a lotof times so rod off. But that
little bit of a hill it allowsthat water to just escape out to the
edges and not hang around that stem. So how high should the mound be,
Well, you know, we likewe like about twelve inches around in

(09:52):
diameter, and then as far asheight, I mean two three inches.
It don't make a mountain, right, don't a volcano, you know,
just a couple. You don't wantthe water rolling off. You just want
that plant to sit a little higher. Or in this case, you're gonna
plant your seeds a little higher.So you know you do that. So
make your mound, and then here'swhere you really build it up. So

(10:13):
what we like to do is wherethat mound's gonna go, we loosen the
soil four to six inches underneath,we'll add in, you know, compost
we'll add in our worm castings andcoffee grounds. And as far as how
much do we use, what yousay, Mary, two to three cups
of composts for every planting hole,probably a quarter cup to a half a
cup of worm castings. We usea little more of those every year because

(10:35):
they're just magical and they don't overpowerthe soil. And then a couple of
tablespoons of coffee grounds. We putthose all in, and then we talked
about it. Don't do this untilthat temperature gets above you know, sixty
degrees. Test your soil. Getit, get it, inexpensive soil meter,
go out how many times you knowit can be seventy degrees for four
or five days, or eighty degrees. You go out and test that soil

(10:58):
early spring and it's fifty one degrees. We all get anxious in the spring
to get out there in our gardensand we want to get stuff in the
ground super early, but you reallydo need to wait for best results.
That's right, That's right, soyou know. And then finally when we're
talking about building this, the othermistake that they kind of make when planting
is get it in a location itgets a lot of sun. I mean,
it needs a minimum of six toeight hours, but eight hours is
way better, tens even more,and morning sun's really the key here.

(11:22):
You can go I was going tohit on that, and you stole my
God, but that's good morning sun. And Severy's like, what's the difference
between morning and evening sun? They'reboth you know, less and not intense.
Well, cucumbers have a lot ofmildew issues and they have a lot
of mold issues. And what causesthat moisture on the leaves, Well,
they get wet overnight. That's justtypical. You know, you have do
well, you get that early morningsun that dries off those leaves nice and

(11:43):
early in the morning, and youdon't have to worry about those chances coming
on. So that's why you wanta little bit more morning sun than anything
else. But again, they needa lot of sun during the day.
So all right, we've covered numberone, which is plant with seeds.
We've covered number two, which isyou know, build that soil up and
put a little mound in. We'llcome back with number three and four after

(12:05):
we take a quick break, andwe'll talk some more about how to grow
cucumbers like crazy this year. Allright, we are back and excited to
have our first podcast of the seasontalking about cucumbers on how to plan it
for success. And as we said, we covered planting with seeds and we
covered how to fill that planting areawith some serious power. Now it's all

(12:26):
about once you put those seeds inthe ground, what do you need to
do. You need to melt fromthe start. And you're gonna hear us
say that with every single plant wetalk about because it's so vital, and
in cucumbers it's even more. Andyou know it. Mulch helps with so
many things in a crop. Sofor cucumbers, it helps keep competing weeds
away and that's huge because those weedscannot take resources then from your plants.

(12:50):
But it also helps to hold moisturein the soil to the root level,
not so much up around the plantbecause when you mulch, you don't want
to always mulch right up to theedge of the roots. But it helps
the soil from drying out so fast. And then really important in the spring
is it helps regulate soil temperature.So once that soil temperature heats up a
little bit and you get a supercold night, it's not going to lose

(13:11):
all its heat on one night,and in the summer when it's super hot,
it's not going to get all thatheat during the day. So mulch
is critical for so many things withcucumbers. But it's a little different because
we're planting with seeds, right,and mulching actually starts on day one,
the day you plant your seeds,rather than waiting until the leaves come up
through the ground. Yep, whenyou first plant your seeds, you just

(13:31):
want to plat a place, alight coating of mulch on top of the
mound. So you want the lightto SOI get to the soil. It's
a light though, what's like,what do you mean by light? Like?
How much would you put on them? Less than an inch? One
inch all around the mountain. Youdon't want any exposed dirt scene because you
don't want it to dry out,but you want the seed things to be
able to pop through the mulch.Yeah, so you put a four or

(13:52):
six inch coato mulch on, they'regoing to struggle a little bit coming through
that. So she's absolutely right.You know, one inch just something keep
weed seeds from blowing in and goingthere. So then what do you do?
So you wait, you water,You let those seeds sprout up,
Let them get a little bit ofstrength, don't start suffocating just as as
they grow up. Leave that inchon there. Let them get four or

(14:13):
five six inches tall, and thenadd a couple more inches about half of
it, you know, so it'sa little bit thicker. Where do you
want to end up. You wantto end up about four to six inches
deep of mult around your plant.Now, with cucumbers, straws great,
but I'll tell you this is onearea. And we've really started talking about
this a lot the last few years. Pine needles are fantastic for cucumbers because

(14:37):
they also keep if you have asprawling vine of cucumbers, they keep that
from touching bear soil, and they'repretty if you have to live around pine
trees are pretty easy to get.I guess we probably need to clarify too.
For those people that do the moundsof cucumbers and also have beare soil
throughout the whole row, you wantto mulch that as well, because as

(14:58):
the cucumber vines grow, they're goingto sprawl out onto that bare ground and
they need to be protected from touchingthat soil. I'm really glad you said
that, because up around the plants, I still like straw because it's a
little more it holds a little bitmore heat in than pine neals do.
The pine needles around the edges aregreat because, like you said, it's
just there as they grow and tokeep the fruit on. So whatever you

(15:20):
do, whether it's straw, whetherit's you know, pine needles, you
can use shredded leaves. I likeavoiding them mirror because they hold so much
moisture they can rot things out.I really like the straw of the pine
needles. But get that mulch downand then add to it as they grow,
and you know it's going to reallyhelp your crop long term, especially
keeping the cucumbers you do have growingsafe from palms way. So that leaves

(15:43):
one last thing in our four hugethings to do to grow crazy cucumbers.
And it's fertilized early and often.And this is where I think so many
people may make a mistake. Theywait. They're scared about their plants,
so they wait a whole month beforethey ever give it any addition, no
power, and then they just powerthe heck out of it. They just
give it a big old full dose. So you really want to have great

(16:07):
success. Yes, you build somepower in with worm castings and all that,
but you've got to fertilize often butlightly right once the seeds have sprouted,
they're growing for about two weeks.You really want to start using a
liquid fertilizer to feed them. That'sright. So what are some of the
best choices If you happen to havea compost pile, make some compost t.
We have a great article on SimpleGarden Life about how to make compost

(16:30):
team use it. It's pretty simple. You put some composts in a bucket,
you stir it a few times,and you're gonna end up with compost
t That's a great way to feedyou know, every ten to fourteen days.
You don't need to weaken it.Feed your plants. It's going to
give them all that power worm castingteas another favorite. Yeah, it's a
great one. Okay, So youdon't have these things, what can you
use? You can use good organicliquid commercial fertilizers. There's a ton of

(16:52):
them out there, and we havelinks on all of our sites to lots
of them. But here's the keywith using them. You can't use them
at full strength. No, youreally need to dilute them to be a
half strength with young seedlings. Yeah, and that the first few weeks.
So everybody's like, well, whenshould I When should I do this when
we like to wait till seedleans arethree to four weeks old, I would

(17:14):
say that's the safe zone and givethem their first light dose, and then
every two weeks after that, everyten to fourteen days, just give them
a light dose. Now it's liquidfertilizer, so you know, get it
on early in the morning. Youdon't have to worry about the sun burning
or anything like that. But alighter dose over a long period is way
better than big doses once a monthor once every other month, because you

(17:37):
give a big dose of nutrients atall once and what happens The plants just
grow like crazy. But at theexpense of at the expense excuse me,
of producing blooms and fruit right.And what is the best way to fertilize
it is it right at the roots, is on the leaves. So it's
interesting with cucumbers, you know,liquid fertilizers soak through everything. I'm not
a big proponent with cucumbers in thespring of getting them all wet because you
have some some mil dose. SoI like doing the soil right around them.

(18:00):
If it touches a little, it'sgoing to be okay. It's not
going to hurt them. But yeah, I like that liquid. It goes
right in the ground, right uparound the roots as they get bigger and
get into summer. Yes, youcan get it because you can't even find
the cucumber plants half the time.You know what, I have a great
trick for that. I know youdo. I figured i'd lead into that
for you. One big hit I'vefound extremely helpful, especially midsummer when the

(18:21):
cucumbers are growing like crazy. Isway early on when you first plant them
and you've thinned them down to twoper mound, is put a skewer in
the ground, in the mound wherethe roots are going to be located.
That way, there is no questionabout where you should be fertilizing. Yeah,
so we have, Yeah, wehave cucumber plants in our garden.
We have cucumber plants in our strawbales that we plant. We have several
tests in about three or four yearsago. I don't know when you first

(18:44):
discovered this. I go out tothe garden one day and I come in.
I'm like, hey, why arethere a bunch of skewers all over
this area? She explained to mewhat she did, and I'm like,
well, that was brilliant, Sowe do it now all the time.
It's great for zucchini plants, cucumbers, anything that sprawls, it's excellent for.
So there you have it. Fourtips and you know what, they're
so simple, but you got toget all four together. Is once you

(19:06):
know, use the seeds. Trustme that they'll catch up and they will
be there. I know. Yousee this big plant, You're like,
I don't want to start with seeds. It'll it'll beat them out. Make
sure you have good soil, usecompus, use worm castings, you know,
coffee grounds, heck, even putsome eggshell powder in anything to build
that nutrient value of the mound.And then you know, third, it's

(19:26):
really important to make sure that youknow they're gonna get mulched and have the
mulch down. And then you gotto fertilize them regular but lightly. I
mean that's the key. And thenI mean we talk about it and it's
worked like a charm for us.Yeah, we do it in spring and
then we also do a second cropin midsummer. I know. So hey,
our first podcast. We're glad tobe back. Always feel free to

(19:47):
email us if you have some ideasfor podcasts or have questions, We get
lots of them every day. Wemay be featured on the podcast. You
might be featured. You might belike Andy Flowers today from Tulsa. So,
all right, Mary, I thinkit's time for our first time for
twenty twenty four. All right,remember whenever you do, find the fun
and gardening and grow something beautiful.All right? Until next week, everyone,
happy gardening. We hope you've enjoyedthis episode. Subscribe to the Simple

(20:11):
Garden podcast on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or most of your favorite
podcast apps. You can also headover to simplegardenlife dot com where you can
listen and read all of the shownotes to every episode. And if you
have any questions, any ideas forshow topics, or if you want to
share your favorite garden tip, emailus at the farm at owgarden dot com.
Until next time, Thanks everyone,