Monday, March 14, 2011

Cucumber Recovery Power (review)

This warm season, we grow three cucumber varieties; Apple (Phoenix seeds), Green Gem (Eden Seeds) and White Spine (Greenpatch Organic Seeds). Last warm season was not a good cucumber season for us and we only grown White Spine cucumber. This year cucumber has been one of our main harvest so I am making notes on each variety that we grow this season.Although they share the same general name “cucumber”, they have different characteristic like each siblings in one family. Furthermore, we like to make notes on how each variety cope with heat waves and their recovery after that,

Apple Cucumber

Mid-bearing and I think it is high-yielding variety since there were many female fruits. However, heat waves came when it just started early-phase of fruit production and left them in no good shape anymore. Not resistant to disease and takes a very long time to produce fruit again after heatwaves. It is almost 2 months now since heat waves and just started to produce again. Some seedlings dislike transplanting and some don’t mind. If the fruit is expose too much strong sun, it will ripen too quickly when the size of fruit is still very small that you have to harvest them quickly before it turns really yellowish.

cucumber apples

Green Gem Cucumber

Prolific producer,early-bearing and have a long harvest season. Suitable to grow in container and does not mind to be transplanted. Grow well in hard clay soil too.Sometimes has a bit more of bitter taste compared with the other two varieties. More success in getting straight form,bigger and longer fruit by wrapping the fruit with paper after manually pollinated.  Disease resistant~prune off the sick-leaves immediately and plants will be healthy again. Bounce back quickly and produce cucumber after heat waves and roots disturbed. Caution: If growing cucumber in pots, don’t move them around. This is because the roots actually grow through the drainage hole and take root under the pots to the soil. I moved polystyrene container with cucumber plants in it and heard ripping sounds. The next few days, cucumber leaves were flopping. Although container dry up easily, cucumbers have their own plan B. They were sipping water not only from container but from the ground as well. The good thing is that excess water from watering the pots were actually save in the ground and from evaporation. This answered my question about how did my cucumber plant in containers survived without 4 days of watering while we were away.

cucumber green gem

White Spine Cucumber

Very very late producer and does not bear many fruit. So far I got lucky with 2 cucumbers per-plant only. Always have so many male flowers and females are very rare.Can be grown in containers and hard-clay soil. Heat-tolerant. Quick-maturing fruit. Very cool cucumber to eat in room temperature compare with the other two. This is my second season growing them and not much improvement compared with the first season on getting more fruit from this heirloom cucumber. But I like the taste. I think this cucumber might not be suitable to grow in our weather and environment here, considering the other variety don’t have much of a problem. Two cucumber plants growing in polystyrene container together is under attack from aphids. I am letting the fruit on this plants to mature so I can harvest some seeds. Hopefully home-saved seeds will be more adapted with the environment here in Adelaide.

white spine timun

What is your favourite cucumber?

11 comments:

rainfield61 said...

The green Gem Cucumber is more common to me.I never see the rest in supermarket nor in market in Malaysia.

Sue Garrett said...

Do you make anything special with the cucumbers?

meemsnyc said...

Those are 3 very interesting varieties! I like Boston pickling cukes. I normally just make pickles out of them. I don't like them fresh.

CathJ said...

wow so many type of cucumber.. I never know.. ^_^

i amsterdam said...

I have never seen apple and white spine cucumber before, do they taste the same??

Btw, does "ilhan" has any meaning? Sorry... belum habis lagi kisah world cup & turkish footballer ni.. :D I loveee.. that name, I always wonder whether I would know anyone by that name, now I know :D

Veggie Gnome said...

I love all cucumbers. :) My favourite variety for growing in the garden is Armenian cucumber. It grows even in our short growing season.

littlekarstar said...

Hallo! Were your apple cucumbers bitter this year? Mine were! Had to cook them to stop them being so bitter. When do you pick yours?

Bom said...

I did not even know the different cucumber varieties so this post has been very informative. I'm not sure which variety we have. Our cucumbers don't look like any of the three you've posted.

Malay-Kadazan girl said...

Rainfield61~ I only seen the green timun jepun in pasar as well.

Sue~ I thought of making traditional cucumber pickle but I can't find one ingredient which is a tropical fruit seeds from my mother hometown. I just been eating them raw.

Meemsnyc~ I like pickles, must look very tempting in the jar after pickling them.

CathJ~It was difficult to choose which cucumber seeds to buy as there were a lot of variety offered.

i amsterdam~ I think they have slight different taste between cucumbers. Ilhan means "ruler" or "my precious one". My Mongolian supervisor also told me once that Ilhan in her language means something like "empire" or area that they once rule like country that have ends with khan at the back and khan for them is ruler as well. So Ilkhan is a region that their khan once rule.

Veggie Gnome~Armenian cucumber is one of the cucumber variety I will like to grow in the future. I wonder how it taste because I read that it is actually a melon not cucumber.

Mrs Bok~I had to pick them when they were less half the size usually sold in market because they were turning yellow maybe due to the strong sun in mid-summer. It wasn't bitter. Our green gem cucumber sometimes can be bitter.

Bom~I wonder if Filipina cucumber is the same as Malaysia.

~TastyTravels~ said...

Pretty cucumber pictures! I have some apple cucumber seeds (from a trade) that I'm saving for next year. This year I'm going to grow asian cucumbers (Tasty Green), lemon cucumbers, boston pickling cucumber and parisian pickling cucumbers.

Malay-Kadazan girl said...

I also would like to grow lemon cucumber someday. Look similar with apple cucumber in photos.