A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2006 sour cucumbers--help

I have planted cucumbers for YEARS and not had problems, until last year. My loving hubby thought he would help out by testing the soil. It had a defenciency of phosporous (I think it was phosporous) and put a treatment into the garden, but it made things worse.

The plants seem to get "burned" last year, and this year the cucumbers are just plain nasty. They are sour, and uneatable.

Does anyone know how to solve this problem?

Oh, yeah, and the soil is what we call 'black gold". It's compost that has broken down with the topsoil, and is excellent for growing just about anything. My tomatoes are excellent and unaffected, as are my banana peppers, but the cucumbers are suffering.

Help, please!

I'm wondering if it was phosporous or potassium. Either way, you're probably stuck with it for this season. A good flooding of water may flush the soil of the excess salts. This is a good reason why organic soil amendments are a good way to go. They don't tend to have these types of sudden dramatic effects on the soil.

have you try picking them when they are smaller? some cukes do taste better before they get big.

maybe you got an infected or diseased plant? everything else is fine, so maybe the cuke plants were just "duds".

Thanx for the help!

It was potassium. I knew it started with a P but just couldn't remember which. I did think that this year would be a better year for them, but it didn't turn out that way. Maybe next year's crop will produce edible cucumbers.

Yeah, I tried the small ones too. None of them seemed to taste any better. I'll try again next year.

I thought about that. We had a difficult time getting them to grow this year, and had to plant numerous plants.

I'm ready to put this year behind me and start fresh.

CajumMama, I feel your pain. This is the first year that I have managed to hold off the bacterial wilt brought on by the dreaded cucumber beetle. My plants seem very healthy and robust however the cukes are all very very bitter. I have been picking the cukes for sweet midgets and even the smallest ones are bitter. I'm considering just pulling up all the plants and just let the soil rest until this fall when I put in my cover crop. It is so frustrating to have such pretty plants and to have all the fruit they bear be inedible!!

Sarah

The Latino people that I work with always cut a little off the top of their cukes and without peeling the cucumber hold the 2 pieces together and rub them together in a circular motion. Then they rinse both ends. They say this gets the "sour" out. Try it and let me know if it works.

I've heard of doing that, the Cajuns do it also, but I always thought it was to see if was sour or edible. And I usually don't do it, or at least I haven't this year. Maybe I'll try it again.

The excessive potassium can be flushed from the soil. Just be patient, water really well and often for a while. Also make sure the plants are mulched. You could remove the existing fruit too and allow the plants to generate more fruit. Potash is quite soluble and so it shouldn't be troo long before you get some decent tasting cukes.
The snipping off of the stem end of the fruit first does work to remove bitterness, but i think yours are a little too strong for it to work to a point of being edible. Definitely worth a shot before removing all the fruit though.

My Cukes..were yuck this year too? 1st time..

Thanx for the help to all! I'll try flushing the garden soil and pray that I get better cukes.

This is very interesting...I just picked my first cucumber the other day and it was bitter too!! Can this be from all the heat we have been having?? Not enough water?? I've never had this problem before.

netty,

I've never thought about that. I know from what we did to the soil last year that we had a bad yield, but we are in a drought this year, and have been setting record highs in s. louisiana. Maybe that is a factor, too.

Very interesting....

my dad gets the same problem with his.
i normaly end up giving him some of mine.
we both grow the same way in a greenhouse!
just different varieties, he has burpless tastie green, and i get the expensive F1s (all female)