Over in the uk.rec.gardening gorup there is a current discussion about
bitter cucumbers for those who may like to wander over and through an eye
over it.

Farm1 wrote:
Over in the uk.rec.gardening gorup there is a current discussion about
bitter cucumbers for those who may like to wander over and through an
eye over it.

I don't like the theory that bitterness is due to pollination. I never cull
male flowers, I always have swarms of bees and rarely get bitter fruit. I
think if you effectively prevent pollination on open pollinated varieties
you will get very small stunted fruit or none. I don't know much about F1
hybrids (or 'indoor' cucumbers whatever they may be) as I don't use hybrids
except for corn. To me the stress theory is more likely to be right.

D

Farm1 wrote:

Over in the uk.rec.gardening gorup there is a current discussion about
bitter cucumbers for those who may like to wander over and through an eye
over it.

hehe, or start one here instead.

i still haven't found out the culprit here, but
of the two dozen cucumbers we've had this season
(so far, the plants are still producing) only two
have been bitter. i didn't pick either of them so
i could not mark them to know which plant they
came from as i'd hoped.

the second one was not nearly as bitter as the
first.


songbird

"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message
...
Farm1 wrote:
Over in the uk.rec.gardening gorup there is a current discussion about
bitter cucumbers for those who may like to wander over and through an
eye over it.

I don't like the theory that bitterness is due to pollination. I never
cull male flowers, I always have swarms of bees and rarely get bitter
fruit. I think if you effectively prevent pollination on open pollinated
varieties you will get very small stunted fruit or none. I don't know
much about F1 hybrids (or 'indoor' cucumbers whatever they may be) as I
don't use hybrids except for corn. To me the stress theory is more likely
to be right.

I have absolutley no idea about this topic at all, but I do know that 2 of
the posters over there who have said to take off the male flowers are well
thought of and have a reputation for being good gardeners.

I went off to have a look at Dr Google and did a search on "Telegraph
Cucumbers" and found lots of similar advice to get rid of the male flowers.

I must admit that I'd never even considered removing male flowers.

There are many reason causes bitterness in cucumber. One of the most common reason is heat stress. Other reason is like uneven watering, tempetature fluctuations and heredity.

To prevent from bitter you need to raise you cucumber in a best way. Make sure you cucumbers is in an even temperature, proper watering etc.

I (now) just grow lemon cukes - I've never had a bitter one from those.
Not good if you have long dill pickle aspirations, or gherkin
aspirations, but otherwise quite nice. Pick, rub spines off, eat - no
need to peel. Open pollinated so you can save seed (if you only grow one
kind of cuke, or go to a lot more work to keep your seed pure than I'm
willing to.)

--
Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by
Please don't feed the trolls. Killfile and ignore them so they will go away.

The whole male flower removal is new to me. In my experience, cucumbers become bitter under only a couple of conditions. 1) Lack of water - you go away for a few days, it's warm or hot, and nobody waters the garden. 2) Basically the same thing, inconsistency of watering.

At worst, every once in a while I'll have a cucumber where the very ends (1-2 cm or so) are bitter.

However, cucumbers given to me by other gardeners are sometimes bitter and in most cases when I follow up, I discover they have gone on vacation or been away from the garden for other reasons, which meant a failure of consistent watering.

Personally, it's never been an issue in our gardens which I've always attributed to consistent watering.