- Cucumbers (Field) | Key Growing Information
- Cucumbers (Greenhouse) | Key Growing Information
- Cucumber Grafting | Advantages, Materials & Technique
- Cucumber Terminology
- Field-Grown Cucumber Varieties | Comparison Chart (PDF)
- Greenhouse Cucumber Production Guide | Tech Sheet (PDF)
- Greenhouse Cucumber Varieties | Comparison Chart (PDF)
- Cucumber Beetle Lure Instructions | Tech Sheet (PDF)
- How to Top-Graft Cucumbers | Tech Sheet (PDF)
- Webinar Slide Deck | Fundamentals of Cucumber Grafting | 25-pp PDF
- Low-Prune Greenhouse Cucumber Production: 'Demeter' | Tech Sheet (PDF)
- Fundamentals of Cucumber Grafting | Hensley’s Educational Webinar Resources
Cucumber Terminology
Picking the right cucumber is easier once you know the vocabulary used to describe cucumber types, how they're pollinated and a few other key traits. Growers and markets differ in which type they prefer. Knowing the terms helps you see how types differ in flowering, yield and eating quality.
Cucumber Pollination Requirements & Flowering Habits
Cucumbers depend on insects, not wind, to move pollen from male to female flowers. How much pollination help a type needs depends on when it flowers, how many male and female flowers it makes, and how quickly female flowers turn into fruit. Three terms cover most of this: monoecious, gynoecious and parthenocarpic.
Monoecious
Monoecious varieties carry separate male and female flowers on the same plant. Male flowers usually open first, and hot weather tips the balance further toward male flowers.
As a general pattern, the first flowers on a monoecious plant are mostly male, often the first 10–20, and male flowers continue to outnumber female flowers by a wide margin.
As a result, monoecious cucumbers set fruit fairly slowly but over a long stretch. They trellis well and are a good fit when you want a steady harvest over many weeks.
Gynoecious
Gynoecious varieties bear all or almost all female flowers, and lots of them. Bred for exactly these traits, they usually bear earlier and yield more than monoecious types.
Some gynoecious varieties must be pollinated to set fruit; others don't. For those that do, a monoecious pollenizer has to grow nearby and flower at the same time. That's why seed of these varieties is usually mixed with about 10–15% monoecious seed. The pollenizer plants make mostly male flowers, and insects carry their pollen to the gynoecious flowers.
With good pollination, gynoecious plants set their crop over a shorter window than monoecious types. That concentrated set makes them the choice for machine harvest and any situation where you want a big yield in a short time.
Parthenocarpy
Parthenocarpic varieties set fruit without pollination. They're the type to grow under cover, in high tunnels, hoophouses and greenhouses, or anywhere pollinators are scarce or kept out.
Kept well away from pollen-producing cucumbers, parthenocarpic plants bear seedless fruit.
Since parthenocarpic varieties make so few seeds, their seed costs more to produce. Check each variety's description to see whether it's parthenocarpic.
Parthenocarpic & Gynoecious
Some varieties are both gynoecious and parthenocarpic, combining the heavy yields of all-female plants with no need for a pollenizer.
If you want seedless fruit from these varieties, keep pollinators away; pollinated fruit will have seeds and may not be marketable. That's why they're usually grown in greenhouses or hoophouses fitted with insect screening.
