How one can Harvest and Retailer Cucumbers

Because the climate heats up, now’s the proper time to develop and choose cucumbers! With these simple ideas and methods, you’ll be ready to efficiently harvest and retailer the cucumbers you develop till they’re able to eat.

The next is an excerpt from The Greenhouse and Hoophouse Grower’s Handbook by Andrew Mefferd. It has been tailored for the online.

The Resilient Cucumber

Cucumbers are a really fast-growing crop. When grown rapidly at excessive temperatures, they’ll take as little as twenty-one days to go from seed to transplant stage, and one other twenty-one days to go from transplant to first harvest. Below sizzling circumstances, mature vegetation can develop 4 inches (10 cm) or extra in a day. So long as they’re saved effectively watered, cucumbers vegetation can tolerate hotter temperatures than tomatoes.

The quick development charge means cucumbers might require extra frequent consideration than the opposite vining/fruiting crops. In periods of quick development, cukes might have pruning or trellising greater than as soon as per week. Small-fruited varieties like cocktail cucumbers might have to be picked as soon as a day or extra to maintain them from getting too large.

Harvesting Cucumbers

Determine 10.8. A pickling cucumber being grown by the high- wire (single-leader) technique within the writer’s hoophouse.

Frequency of harvest in cucumbers is set each by selection and by how briskly the vegetation are rising. The purpose of cucumber harvest is to select the cucumbers as soon as they’ve reached a minimal dimension and diploma of maturity, earlier than they’ve grow to be overmature. There’s some latitude in when to select cucumbers, since they’re picked when horticulturally mature, not botanically mature (in different phrases, ripe).

Take into account the distinction between selecting a ripe tomato or pepper (pores and skin has modified coloration, seeds are mature) and selecting a cucumber (based mostly on dimension, not ripeness; seeds shouldn’t be mature if current in any respect). In greenhouse cukes, the matter could be confused, since they’re parthe-nocarpic and gynoecious and don’t set seed. However we will nonetheless say that overmaturity corresponds to the stage of maturity in a cucumber when it will in any other case have laborious seed. This definition nonetheless permits for some latitude in when to reap.

A selected selection could also be harvested barely bigger or smaller, as soon as it has reached horticultural maturity, based mostly on grower desire, purchaser desire, and stage of development. Cucumber vegetation in a extra generative stage will have a tendency to provide longer, bigger fruits.

Cucumber Maturity

Overmaturity in cucumbers corresponds to bloating. It’s because cucumbers develop to a sure size earlier than doing most of their diameter growth. So an overmature cucumber is one which has reached its last size and elevated an excessive amount of in diameter. You need to choose cucumbers on the desired size, earlier than they’ve begun bloating, as a result of taste will begin happening at that time.

Since protected tradition cucumbers are seedless, overmaturity is just not as a lot of an issue as in discipline cucumbers, the place cukes will start to have laborious seed when picked overmature. However the perfect consuming high quality in cucumbers comes after the cuke has stuffed out and reached its optimum size, and earlier than it has began to bloat.

In case you are rising a brand new selection and are not sure the place the candy spot of maturity is, undermature cukes are likely to look barely angular as a result of they haven’t stuffed out utterly but, like an underinflated balloon. And an overmature cuke can have stopped rising in size and began increasing outward solely. Most cukes are on the proper diameter after they not have pointy ends and are cylindrical, however earlier than their form has begun to inflate. In the end, there’s some discretion in when to select cucumbers, so present employees examples of what you need them to select and never choose.

Publish-Harvest: Storing Cucumbers

It’s necessary to get cucumbers out of the solar as quickly as doable, since their darkish pores and skin absorbs a whole lot of warmth the longer they’re overlooked. Retailer cucumbers at 55 to 57°F (13–14°C), and at 95 p.c humidity.

So long as they’re held below ultimate post-harvest circumstances for just a few days till sale, you’ll be able to retail lengthy European cucumbers or put them in a CSA field with out shrink-wrapping. For a produce gross sales chain for much longer than that, or wholesaling the place dealing with is out of your management, shrink-wrapping must be used.

Cucumber Wrapping and Packaging

Determine 10.10. A younger crop of lengthy European greenhouse cucumbers grown umbrella-style. The vegetation have simply reached the highest wire, which is 6 to 7 toes (1.8–2.1 m) excessive, and are quickly to be topped to let the laterals develop.

On a really small scale, stretchy plastic wrap could also be used to wrap the cukes, with the ends twisted to seal in moisture. On a medium scale, machines can be found that can pace up the method. The best of those could be loaded with a big roll of plastic wrap, with a sizzling wire to chop it. An individual stands in entrance of the machine and wraps every cucumber, and after they elevate the wrapped cucumber the new wire cuts the plastic.

On a bigger scale, cucumbers are put right into a free tube of plastic wrap after which despatched on a conveyor belt by a heater, which shrinks the wrap to suit the cucumber. These have a really excessive output and are way more costly than the opposite choices.

Most American slicer and pickling sorts don’t want shrink-wrapping, as a result of their skins are thick sufficient to stop dehydration. A lot of the mini/midi/cocktail thin-skinned cucumbers can profit from some sort of dehydration safety, similar to lengthy Europeans.

This packaging may be helpful to maintain the cucumbers collectively in a marketable unit, for the reason that smaller sorts are often offered in teams reasonably than by the piece or the pound. Shrink-wrapping cocktail or snack cucumbers to a small cardboard tray is a standard business technique that additionally has good presentation. Bagging small-fruited cukes on the market could also be a extra sensible choice for smaller growers. The downside is that generally the bag can fog up, making the cucumbers laborious to see.

Really helpful Reads

Attending to the Root: Rising & Harvesting Carrots

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