Cucumber Growing Tips for the Houston Garden

Who doesn’t love a fresh, juicy garden grown cucumber? Cucumbers scream summer and can be successfully grown during each of Houston’s warm seasons, and even the hot season.

Direct Seed Cucumbers into the Soil in Your Houston Garden

Rooted Garden starts vegetables in the Curcurbit family from seed. From our experience, plants thrive and tend to be healthier when grown from seed, versus from plant.

Plant seeds when the day time temperatures are at least 50 degrees, and there is no chance of overnight front.

Use high quality, non-GMO seeds. High quality seeds ensure a higher rate of germination and more cucumbers for you! Once the temperatures reach 85 and above we plant the Suyo variety, which is a productive producer during, June, July and August in Houston gardens.

See the full planting list for March in Houston here.

Flowering Vegetables in the Houston Garden

Many vegetables in the garden will flower before producing fruit. Some examples include, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, okra and eggplant.

Ideally, flowering vegetables need 6-8 hours of sunlight for fruit production. However, less isn’t necessarily bad, you might just find that they take longer to produce.

When setting up kitchen gardens for our clients we look for a southern exposure location, this helps to ensiure we are maximizing the

Cucumbers May Need Help with Pollination in the Houston Garden

Did you know there are male an female flowers on cucumber plants? It is true, and just like in human nature they have a specific time when they need to be fertilized to produce fruit.

If you have grown cucumbers before you might have noticed a small, immature cucumber behind a flower. This is the female flower. The male flower consists of just a single flower.

If there are not enough pollinators in the garden it might become our job to hand pollinate the cucumbers. This is very simple and involves using a clean, dry paintbrush to simply brush the inside center of the male flower and then brush the inside center of the female flower, essentially transferring pollen from male to female flower.

Learn tips on tending the Houston garden in the spring here.

Cucumbers Need a Strong Trellis

These aggressive growers need guidance and help from you as they grow. Seen here, Nicole is using twine to tie the stems to the trellis. Doing this once a week will ensure the garden isn’t taken over by vines, and will support the plant as it grows.

Cucumbers require a strong and sturdy trellis at least 6’ tall. We offer arch, panel and obelisk varieties in our shop.

Harvest Cucumbers Often in the Houston Garden

After about 55-65 days your cucumbers will be ready to harvest. Harvest in the morning when the fruit is at it’s sweetest, and eat as soon as possible. That is one wonderful benefit of your own kitchen garden, the ability to harvest as needed.

We often tell our clients to harvest often, this will signal to the plant to keep producing. Vegetables grown organically in the garden won’t reach the same size as a grocery store variety, but will be grown organically without chemicals, and as a result will taste better!

Cucumber Varieties