How to Grow Cucumbers?

It is a nutritious, juicy, crisp and tasty food that can be eaten fresh, dried, pickled and canned, and is therefore considered a delicacy for all seasons. Cucumbers are distributed all over the world and are widely cultivated in the north and south of our country.

1. Variety Selection

For cucumber vegetable varieties, choosing the right good varieties is a prerequisite for high-yielding cucumber cultivation and increasing yield and income, the appropriate sowing period, according to the insulation conditions of the daylight greenhouse used to determine the appropriate planting period first, and then according to the number of days of seedling projection forward to the appropriate sowing period, general daylight greenhouse cucumber seedling age is about 2 months.

2 .Seed Treatment and Sowing Amount and Preparation of Seedbed Soil

Cucumber seeds are generally treated with hot water at 50℃～55℃ in clean containers, the amount of water is 5 to 6 times the amount of seeds. Put the cucumber seeds in water, stirring with a small wooden stick until the water temperature drops to 25 ℃, and then soak for 4 to 6 hours. Soak for 4 to 6 hours. Wash the seeds 2 to 3 times with water, then shake off the water droplets, wrap them in a damp gauze or towel, and place them in a warm place for germination. Turn the seeds twice or more during the germination process to facilitate neat germination. Stop germinating when more than 70% of the cucumber seeds germinate or split their mouths, and prepare the seeds for sowing.

The seeds can be sown in wooden boxes or trays with 10cm of clean sand, watered and scraped flat, then sown or placed on wet sand at 1cm intervals, covered with a flat finger of fine sand (about 1cm), and covered with a layer of newspaper for moisture retention. After sowing, place the seed box in a bed where the day temperature is 25℃~30℃ and the night temperature is 20℃~22℃ to help seedlings emerge as soon as possible. You can also use artificial seedbeds to sow seeds.

3. Cultivation Characteristics of Cucumbers

3.1 Growth and Development Cycles 

The length of the growing season varies depending on the season and cultivation method. The spring and summer cucumber growing season is long, and the direct sowing autumn cucumber growing season is short. The entire growing season of cucumbers is divided into four periods.

(1) Germination stage.

The germination period is from seed germination to the first true leaf emergence, i.e., "heartbreak," which generally takes 5 to 6 days, and requires high temperature, humidity, and sufficient light.

(2) Seedling stage.

It takes more than 30 days from the "heart breaking" to the appearance of the 4th to 5th true leaves, i.e., "clusters", to produce seedlings. During this period, the main focus is still on growth, and temperature and water management should be "promoted" and "controlled" properly, with emphasis on promoting root development, expanding leaf area, ensuring normal flower bud differentiation, and properly controlling stem growth.

(3) First flowering period.

It takes about 25 days from the time the first melon, or root melon, is planted to the time of first flowering. The number of flower buds and blossoms is increasing during the first flowering period, so it is necessary to promote the growth of the root system and control the growth of stems and leaves, so that the plant will not focus on nutritional growth, but on both nutritional growth and reproductive growth of blossoms and fruits, to ensure the quantity and quality of flower buds, and to stabilize the root melon.

(4) Fruiting period.

It takes 30 to 60 days for spring and summer melons and more than 40 days for autumn melons to bear fruit. The length of the fruiting period is the key to high and low yield, so we should strengthen field management during the growing period to make the seedlings strong and the melons numerous, and the main side trainees should knit the melons together, that is, three-dimensional fruiting, so as to prevent premature failure, prolong the fruiting period, and increase the yield.