Cucumbers!
(Seasonal item - Available May to June)
A
panoply of cucumber plants awaits you seasonally at Swansons! And
next to tomatoes, nothing else tastes quite as good as sliced cukes
in your summer salad. Our Northwest region produces some of the best
cucumbers during our warm summer months.
Cucumbers
are a warm season vegetable and should only be set out when the ground
is warm and the nighttime temperatures are above 50F. They need a
soil rich in organic matter/compost and benefit from mulching after
they get growing.
Cucumbers
require a decent amount of growing space, using vertical
structures such as trellises will make up for limited space in
your garden. When
plants are producing, harvest every couple of days to prevent cukes
from getting overly large or yellow and to keep plants productive.
The larger cucumbers grow, the more likely they are to loose their
flavor or become bitter. Bitterness can also be casued by plant stress; poor soil, irregular watering
or extreme temperatures.
Cucumbers
for containers, garden plots, rambling or trellised and each with it's
own personality:
- Salad Bush crop Cukes for smaller spaces
- Bush Cukes for pickling
- Sweet and mild-flavored lemon cucumbers
- Disease resistant Marketmores'
- Crunchy burpless Orient Express
- American selections award winners Sweet Success.
Try
some of these varieties that deserve garden space, but are less well
known:
• Satsuki
Madori
We love this rare, hard to find variety for its tender skin and flavorful
flesh which is never bitter.
• Armenian
Thin
skins, crisp, sweet tasting flesh and few seeds make the Armenian a garden
treasure. A well-traveled variety from Armenia to Italy over 600 years
ago, and then on to our shores.
• Suyo
Long
Narrow,
long and curved fruit with dark green skin and firm,
delicious flesh. Expect generous yields of nearly seedless,
burpless fruit from this Chinese variety.
• White
Sun
A
Korean hybrid cuke featuring semi-white skin and spine. Expect
generous amounts of crisp fleshed fruit that are delicious fresh
or pickled
• Mid-East
Prolific
Shaped
like small cigars, the 5 to 7 inch long fruits have excellent flavor,
thin skins and fine, textured flesh. Vines bear early and are productive.
Our favorite!
The
cucumbers listed above are easy-to-grow and do well in the Pacific
Northwest.
For
pleasure beyond the anticipation of eating these fruits (botanically
related to melons) pause for a moment and imagine the cultures cultivating
cucumber crops for over 3000 years.
From
the East Indies to Egypt, to the Greeks and Romans and later into Asia,
these excellent plants have graced civilizations fresh fruit, sauces,
soups, pickles, salads, chutneys, liquors and fragrances for soaps
and creams.
Swansons
is pleased to seasonally offer the best selection of cucumbers
for our area.
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