How to Grow Cucumbers in Your Home Garden
Cucumbers rank right up there with tomatoes when it comes to favorite vegetables, and no home garden should be without a cucumber vine or two. Cucumbers are easy to grow and under the right garden growing conditions, a couple of cucumbers vines will keep a family eating fresh cucumbers all summer.
Choose the Right Cucumbers to Grow
Cucumbers come in several different growing varieties, to know which variety is best for your garden, think about garden space and how you plan to eat the cucumbers.
The bush growing variety of cucumbers grow on small compact bushes and take up less space in your garden than vine growing cucumbers. Bush plants don’t produce runners so there will be no need to provide a growing structure for them.
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Straight 8's is a variety that is good for eating fresh. If you want to make pickles, choose a pickling cucumber variety. The vines produce more and smaller cucumbers that are perfect for making pickles.
Soil Preparation
Cucumbers prefer a flat, well-drained sunny location in your garden. The vines are heavy feeders and require constant soil moisture.
Add several inches of compost or well rotted cow manure to the garden soil and till in to the depth of 6 inches, then rake the garden soil level before planting. The compost or cow manure will keep the cucumber plants fed all season and prevent garden soil from compacting and hindering plant root growth.
How to Plant Cucumbers
Cucumbers need to be planted in small hills, whether you're starting with seeds or plants. If you plan to allow the cucumber vines to run freely on the garden soil, form hills 6 feet apart. Form each soil hill about 12 inches in diameter and 6 inches high, working a little compost or cow manure in each hill. Keep the garden soil worked to prevent weed growth and soil crusting until the cumber vines begin running, then apply a thick layer of mulch for the cucumber vines to grow