Cucumber help

Hi,  I am in zone 8a and am in search of some help for my cucumbers.  We went on a 2 week vacation with my cucumbers doing wonderfully when I left.  When I returned I had an explosion from my cucumbers.  I started trimming them back so I could really see what I had and I think I trimmed them back too much.  I am also reasonably new to gardening so any help is truly appreciated.  I tried to put some pictures of before and after but it didn't work so I will need to figure that out too.

Before vacation: 


After trimming: 

Cismith, I'm relatively new, also, so don't rely on my reply, alone. If you are asking if you trimmed a little too much, it's possible and it's probable. Unless everything was yellow and dry, in which case it's okay. If you are asking if they will recover, they should. My cucumbers have outgrown their 5' trellis but I'm letting then go. The more flowers, the more the pollinators have a reason to attend to them. = more fruit. I only trim dead lower leaves and a rare side branch that is completely sneaking out of bounds to where I can't get around it.

Looks like you have a few vines that will carry on there.  What made you cut them back?

I would love for mine to 'explode'.
Maybe I need to go on vacation...

CC

It was so overgrown that I could not see what I had. It does look like it will come back. As I still have a couple that are still flowering.

Stupid questions. Are some cucumbers "female" with mainly female flowers? Mine have 90% female flowers and some seem to have been fertilized and are growing little "sweet gerkin" size cucumbers. I have Pickling, Muncher and Crystal Apple.

sanderson wrote:Stupid questions.  Are some cucumbers "female" with mainly female flowers?  Mine have 90% female flowers and some seem to have been fertilized and are growing little "sweet gerkin" size cucumbers.  I have Pickling, Muncher and Crystal Apple.

Not a stupid question. I looked this up the first time because I found a strange word listed in a seed catalog. Some of the newer varieties are "gynoecious" - and have all female flowers. They still need to be pollinated by a male flower, unless they are also parthenocarpic (which yields seedless cukes.) My reading says there's usually a few normal male-producing seeds included in the packet for the non-parthenocarpic gynoecious varieties for pollination purposes, but it sounds like they aren't always dyed or anything, so for those of us only planting a few seeds instead of row gardening the whole packet, we might not plant any!  I don't see Muncher or Crystal Apple being listed as gynoecious, but some of the pickling varieties I'm seeing are. Or maybe you accidentally stumbled on a batch that has whatever features the breeders now select intentionally to get the gynoecious cukes! If they're growing differently than they should, i.e. they plants shouldn't be growing "sweet gerkin" looking cucumbers... I haven't actually seen the gynoecious or parthenocarpic cucumbers in person, so I don't know if they grow differently.

I grow Muncher cucumbers every year.  They are my favorite.  They do have both male and female flowers on the plant.  You are lucky to get lots of female flowers.  See if you can find a male and hand pollinate if necessary.

I grow a parthenocarpic (sp) cucumber from Botanical Interests called Baby Persian.  It has a female flower at each leaf joint.  It does not have any male flowers.  The male flowers are not needed for this type of variety.  The skin is smooth and the cucumbers can be eaten small but larger than a gerkin but you can let them grow larger.  Hardly any or no seeds inside.  

Are your cucumbers gerkin size because they have not been pollinated??

Thanks for the replies. I'm used to seeing the male flowers arrive first so I had to ask. The jury is still out on whether the "gerkins" have been pollinated. The syrphid fly is the main pollinator in my city backyard, and they seem to be more interested in the getting-taller-by-the-day "Kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate" flower/bush. I have brushes.

Here are the largest two, +3" I think I will try one in a day or two.