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Fruiting vegetables
Cucumber
Fast, vigorous, and productive enough that most households only need two or three plants.
Get your planting dates
This guide covers how to grow, harvest and keep cucumber, deliberately without sowing dates,
because the right date depends entirely on your climate zone. GardenBuddy's planting calendar
covers all seven Australian climate zones and will tell you exactly when to sow where you live.
Growing
Full sun, rich soil, and consistent water, cucumbers turn bitter under drought stress. Trellising keeps fruit straighter and cuts down on fungal disease from soil contact.
Common problems
- Powdery mildew late in the season, near-unavoidable, plant a second sowing to keep production going
- Bitter fruit from irregular watering, not variety
- Cucumber beetle and pumpkin beetle damage on seedlings
Harvest
Pick regularly and while fruit is still firm and glossy. Left too long, cucumbers turn bitter and the plant slows down thinking its job is done.
Preserving this crop
Best suited to:
Seed saving
Difficulty: Moderate. Cross-pollinates readily with other cucumber varieties via insects, isolate by distance or hand-pollinate. Let the fruit go well past edible, yellow and hard, before harvesting seed.