Squash, cucumber and pumpkin belong to the cucurbit family and most garden varieties produce both male and female flowers. Since only female flowers produce fruit, gardeners get concerned when they see too many male flowers and like any other gardening problem they invent lots of ways to fix the problem. Unfortunately most of these so-called fixes don’t actually work.
What causes too many male flowers on cucumbers, pumpkins and squash, and what can be done about it?
Cucumbers are grown by many gardeners but they are still a mystery shrouded in myths. Learn more about cucumbers as I debunk some common myths.
Should you prune cucumbers? Some people prune suckers off tomatoes and if it is a good idea for tomatoes, would it not also be a good idea for cucumbers?
If you decide to prune, which pruning method is best. Some prune out sucker, others remove lower leaves and still others even prune out excess fruit. Is pruning cucumbers a myth or not?
I never thought cucumbers were so complicated. When ordering seeds you can certainly order burpless cucumber seed. And the English cucumbers are burpless, or at least my wife thinks since she always complains when I buy the American slicing variety at the grocery store.
I recently posted about a popular procedure for making cucumbers less bitter, on our popular Garden Fundamentals Facebook Group, and someone asked, are the bitter free cucumbers really burpless?
Good question. I thought the answer was yes, and so do 99% of the blog posts on line that talk about this topic. Guess what? We are wrong. Lets stop burping and sort it all out.
The reason cucumbers, squash, muskmelons and watermelons should not be grown near each other is that they are all cucurbits and may cross-pollinate to produce weird franken-gourds. This myth does have some truth in it, but it is not good gardening advice.
