Keeping your Cucumbers Cool

One day in elementary, my brother and I were sent home with cucumber seeds from class. It wasn’t until a couple days later that I looked at those seeds, and an empty pot of my mom’s and thought “It couldn’t be that hard, could it.”

Needless to say it wasn’t. Within no time, we had big juicy cucumbers to pick from our porch for our salads. Little me was so proud.

If a little girl can get a plant to grow from seeds, you can at least keep it alive!

Here’s the basics:

1) Cucumbers do not like change. When I pulled them out of their bed and potted them individually, they flopped, wilted, dried up, all the things. You’re going to want to pick a spot for them, and keep them there. So how do you pick a good spot?

2) Cucumbers need a good bit of sunlight. No, indoors isn’t gonna cut it, but depending on what zone you’re in (I’m in 9B) you might be able to get away with part-sun (half sun half shade). Make sure you pick a spot to plant them that will receive direct sun rays at least half of the day. If you have a full sun spot great, but there’s one thing you need to look out for:

3) Heat. Too much sun equals too much heat, and your cucumbers will be floppy and sad. To mitigate this, I water them with a can or a hose once a day. If you don’t have the time to water every day I would opt for part-sun.

Cucumbers are fairly drought resistant, so they don’t need a lot. Just a little '“top off” a day and they’re good to go.

4) Last thing you’ll want to consider is how you want your cucumbers to grow. Cucumbers climb or crawl. Personally I recommend using a trellis, or some kind of vertical support for them to climb to save space. Alternatively, you could use a hanging pot and let them cascade down if trellising sounds too complicated. Otherwise, they’ll sprawl out everywhere and take up a lot of real estate you could use for other plants.

After considering all these things, and little Sarah, I would categorize this plant as beginner friendly. If she can do it, I know you can too!