A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2006 Cucumber oddity

Hello everyone. I planted 6 cucumber plants (cucumber alibi). They are supposed to be a 4 inch fruit. Thursday there were a bunch of 3-4 inch fruit, so I picked those. What was odd was that I found one cucumber that was 7 inches long and almost 3 inches thick. I planted all the plants at the same time and they all started getting flowers about the same time. Has anybody run across this? A genetic thing since these are Hybrid seeds?

How long can expect my cucumber plants to keep producing fruit if I am diligent in picking them?

Thanks!

Shawn

About your monster cuke, I'd say that maybe the variety is best when picked at that size but perhaps can grow larger. I usually pick a lot of fruit from my cukes for a good 2 months. Once they get fairly old, their production goes down quite a bit--although they still do produce a few a week.

You'll have to keep us posted on fruit production. I only grow cukes to make sweet midgets and am having troubles finding a variety that provides the massive amount of tiny cukes I need all at once.

am having troubles finding a variety that provides the massive amount of tiny cukes I need all at once.
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Try 'gherkins' for good crops of cukes.

thx longy! I was myself looking for a good variety for tiny pickles

You know, this may sound totally wierd..
and 1 person out of 100 may like this..
but we grow picling cucumbers and let them
get realllllllllly big.. and turn a slight
yellow color in places...
My dad and I loved them that way..
*he's passed now*
but we used to fight over would could eat them
faster and get them all..
They had a neat tang to them, and with salt
they were soooooooooo yummy...

My mom loves to pick picklin cukes like when they are about 3" or 4" long....
Still green, verrrrrrrry green and bitter and no seeds.. but to me, it is just tooooooo bitter to eat... :p

Shawn, every time I've planted pickling cukes, I've gotten what my Granddaughter & I call "sleepers", like you describe. I think they're ones that just get hidden real well behind the leaves because they're so close to the same shade of green, that you simply miss seeing them until they're monsters! (Happens to strawberries, too, even though we don't pick them when they're still green! We always start over at the beginning when we pick & go through it all twice, as there's always some "sleepers" hiding from us.)

I gave up trying to raise cukes for pickling, because they can get so big, so fast, that it seems like they're always ready when I'm not! I still plant them though, & use them just for eating like Weezie does, & for putting in salads.

I'm curious though, about if the monster you found had any other cukes on the same plant. If a stray seed found its way into your Alibi package, every cuke on that particular plant should be like that. (Otherwise, it's just a sleeper... & they DO get big, seemingly over night, if you dont catch them when they're small enough to fit in the pickle jar!)