Will cucumbers keep producing?

Hasselback 7/25/2012, 9:24 am

Will a node on a cucumber plant produce more than one fruit? Put another way, once I harvest a cucumber from a node, will it produce another female flower?

Also, it seems that fruit further up on the plant "waits" to develop until the lower fruit is picked. Is this accurate, or is it just my imagination?

G.

elliephant 7/25/2012, 9:57 am

As the season goes on it will start putting out secondary vines from those "spent" areas lower down. Or at least that's been my observation this year.

ETA: And, yes, it has seemed that way to me, too. Until later in the season when the plant really gets grooving. This was the first year I had a cucumber plant last long enough to see it really go crazy.

CharlesB 7/25/2012, 10:02 am

I think with the fruit further up it is just that the roots can only support so much fruit growth at one time. Once you pick some this fruit growth increases in the remaining fruit because it doesn't have to support the one you picked anymore.

This is my first year as well to get successful cucumber plants. Really nice to have fresh, crunchy cukes to enjoy.

CapeCoddess 7/25/2012, 2:37 pm

I picked my first ever cucumber today!! cheers

It seemed to be getting fatter instead of longer so I thought it must be time. How do you know when it's time to pick them?

CC

kittykat 7/25/2012, 3:05 pm

I worked in a commercial greenhouse years ago where we grew long English cukes. Yes - once the plant has made its cucumbers in a node, that node is spent and the cukes in the next node up will mature, and then the node up from that, etc., etc. We used to prune out the little sprouts in each node and just leave the one leaf to support the fruit growth. They grew them up on strings to an overhead wire, pruning out the shoot in each node. As the ripening fruit got higher on the plant, we'd "let down" the string, so that the spent stem would lay flatter along the floor of the greenhouse and the ripening fruit would be nearer the bottom of the plant, allowing the growing main shoot room to continue its growth up the string toward the wire. Cool process...

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