UPDATE: See how I fixed this problem here!
Cucumbers were the very first vegetable plant I ever grew myself, back when the only outdoor space I had was a small balcony that only got 7 hours of sun each day. I started with cucumbers because they are versatile: eat 'em fresh straight from the vine, integrate them into summer recipes like cucumber yogurt sauce or salads, and pickle them in infinite ways to save for holiday gifts.
I've always had an easy time growing my cukes in the past, but this summer seems to be a cucumber blunder. The plants sprouted, vined, and flowered normally, but when they started to produce fruit, this is what I was getting:
You can see the terrible progression from right to left: First, the cucumber seems to be growing a normal, consistent shape. The second cucumber from the right is normal at the tip, but it is beginning to bulge out and turn yellow at the other end. Finally, they all end up like the cucumber to the far left, spherical and bulbous. The longer I let them grow, the rounder they get.
Photo by Josh Roxas
My first thought was that I was letting them stay on the vine for too long before picking them so they were over-ripening. But when I picked a small nicely shaped cucumber, it was not fully formed inside, which you can tell by slicing it open and looking at the size and shape of the seeds.
When I sliced open the round yellow cucumbers, I saw a normal green color and seeds well on their way to becoming normal adult seeds. So the yellow cucumbers seem to be somewhat healthy at least- not full of bugs, not rotting, and not missing seeds altogether.
I used my old friend Google and found a lead that seems promising. Apparently cucumber fruit needs the nutrient Potassium in order to form correctly. A crop of misshaped fruit could mean the plant is lacking in Potassium. However, this puzzles me because I am using the exact same fertilizer that I've used in past years, one that contains a normal amount of Potassium along with Nitrogen and Phosphorous. So why would my nutrient levels be so drastically different this year?
It could be the soil I started out with. More likely, it could also be the pot. Cucumber plants don't like to get water on their leaves and flowers, so you're supposed to grow them in pots with good drainage and water the plant under the pot where the soil can suck in the water from below. I'm not growing my cucumbers in this type of pot because I ran out of them, and sticking to my "reuse and recycle" motto for FarmTina, I just drilled holes into a recycled plastic bucket with no water catch plate underneath. This is what I call "making it up as I go along". This time, I think it turned out to be a mistake.
It's too late to re-pot my cucumbers without traumatizing the plant, but I'm going to try a few other things. First, I'll make some ramshackle catch plates to put under the pots so I can start watering the plants properly. I'm also going to add a second Potassium fertilizer to go with the normal fertilizer I use on them regularly. The leaves are still growing and the vines are still wrapping, so I'm pretty sure I still have some time to fix my mistakes before the last of the fruit forms.
If you have any other ideas, I'd love to hear them. I'm frustrated with my cucumbers because I had already worked on perfecting them for years, so theoretically they should be a breeze this year. Any advice is greatly appreciated!