It’s incredibly hard to grow cucumbers like the ones seen in supermarkets and stores, you know what I mean, the perfectly round, straight cucumbers of a perfect size. However you can certainly try.

Cucumbers are difficult to grow, this is mainly because a constant high temperature is required throughout the growing season and it takes a lot of effort to grow these vegetables.

Soil Preparation

Cucumbers are best grown in pots and or grow bags inside the greenhouse. It is recommended that you use quite large pots (ten inch pots) and John Innes compost number three. That’s all the soil preparation that cucumbers need really as they are not generally grown in boarder soil or outdoors and if they are, their generally grown with little success.

Sowing and Planting

Seeds should be sown indoors in late February or early march at a temperature of 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Seeds should be sown on their sides in 3 inch pots at a depth of about half an inch. Water and leave to germinate.

Plants should be transplanted into their permanent positions in early April, their permanent positions being grow bags or large pots. You should plant one plant per pot or two plants per grow bag.

Looking After the Plants

Keep the plants well watered but making sure the compost is never waterlogged. The main stem should be trained to go up a vertical garden cane. Once the cucumber reaches the top of the greenhouse you can train it to grow on the roof or cut off the growing stem.

You should removed male flowers from most cucumber varieties. This is simple to do as long as you can identify the male flowers from the female flowers. The female flowers should have a small cucumber growing behind the flower while male flowers just have a thin stalk inside the flower.

Harvesting

You can begin harvesting cucumbers once the cucumbers have reached a reasonable size, the most common problem is that people harvest cucumbers to late after they mature therefore stopping other cucumbers being produced on the plant. You should remove cucumbers from the plant using a sharp knife.