5 Simple Causes of Misshapen Cucumbers and How to Grow Straight Ones.
Misshapen Cucumbers are not farmers delight. This is why even though misshapen cucumbers are good for eating, no farmer or garden wants to see them in their farm or garden. So, are your cucumber plants producing C-shaped, or curvy cucumber fruits? And you wish you can grow nothing else but healthy straight cucumbers in your farm? This article is for you.
In this article, I will share with you some of the common reasons why cucumber plants develop are misshapen or curly and then proceed to show you how you can grow a healthy straight cucumber fruits.
What A Non Misshapen Cucumbers Looks Like.
Let us paint a picture. The truth is; no farmer or gardener wants a curly or misshapen cucumbers. When you grow cucumber in garden or farm, you don’t expect it to be misshapen. Instead, you expect it to produce straight greenish and healthy looking cucumbers. However it is not always that way. No matter how careful you are or the nutrients you provide to enrich your soil, you will still wake up to some of your cucumber producing curly, curvy and misshapen cucumbers.
Even though there are nothing wrong or bad about curly and misshapen cucumbers, they are not farmers or gardeners delights. But this doesn’t mean that they are not healthy or safe for human consumption.
Farmers or gardeners mostly prefer their harvest come out in straight greenish cucumber because it is the standard and also because it is more appealing to their market. But growing straight cucumbers is often easier said than done, learning what leads to misshapen cucumbers is the best way or step to combat these issues and possibly grow straight cucumbers.
Why You Have Curly Or Misshapen Cucumbers.
There are many reasons why your cucumber can get misshapen or curly. In this article, we are going to look at a few of them, and how to combat them easily.
High Temperatures
Cucumber doesn’t love extreme heats or hot temperatures. The easiest way to kill or destroy a cucumber plant or fruit is to expose them to very high temperature or extreme heat.
In cucumber growth and fruit production very high temperature can cause a lot of damages such as misshapen cucumber fruit and distortion of pollen production in cucumbers.
When this distortion happens, your cucumber plants usually stop producing pollen or produce pollen that has lower viability which in turn leads poor pollination. Poor pollination of your cucumber plant leads to curvy, curly, or misshapen cucumber fruits.
So, What Is the Best Temperature for Growing Cucumbers
As a farmer or gardener, you shouldn’t allow your cucumber temperature or temperature around your farm get above 90°F (32°C). At this temperature, your cucumber will burn out and it ability to produce pollen affected. High temperatures doesn’t stop there, it goes ahead to affect the pollinators such as bees from doing their job of pollinating flowers in your garden.
High temperature also causes your cucumber plant to churn out more of male cucumber flowers than female flowers which are actually the most important. Because only female pollinated flowers can produce cucumber fruits for you at harvest.
Lack of Pollinators
Bees are one major pollinator of cucumber plants. When pollinators like bee and other are not present or can’t be found pollinating your cucumber, it can easily lead to misshapen cucumber. Beside the lack or pollinators, incomplete pollination is another issue.
Incomplete pollination happens in cucumber plant when pollinator like bees does a poor job collecting pollen from male cucumber flower and carrying them to female cucumber flower. This happens as a result of extreme hotness, heat or very high temperature in your farm or fewer pollinators.
Not just that, Bees are expected to collect hundred of pollen grain to your cucumbers female flowers to for bountiful harvest to happen. This is because one pollen grain forms a single seed. So, if the bees collects and transfer only one pollen grain to your cucumbers female flower, this is already a sign of poor harvest coming.
The thing is; the larger your farm or cucumber plant the high the number of pollinator needed to deliver a perfect pollination job. If you have over 300 cucumber plants for an example, and only two to ten bees are found in your farm or visits your cucumber female flower, it means that your cucumber will not be completely pollinated and its cucumber fruit won’t be fully formed or develop.
How Do I Attract More Pollinator to My Garden Or Farm
There are a lot of ways you can fill up your farm or garden with pollinator. Here are a few of them:
- Avoid pesticides that are not pollinator friendly.
- Plant nectar rich flowers around or closer to your garden or farm. They attract bees.
- Plant crops like bee balm, anise hyssop, and coneflower.
- Throw in overripe banana or banana peels into your farm or garden area.
Lack of Water
One major cause of curvy, curly or misshapen cucumber is lack of water. Cucumber and water are like twins that should never be ripen apart. 90% of cucumber content is water. Once cucumber cannot access water, a lot of things happens just to alert the farmer or the gardener.
For instance, once a cucumber plant lacks water, it becomes stressed, its leaves start turning yellow, the leaves start curling, it experience stunted growth, the cucumber fruit begins to curve or become misshapen cucumbers and it might possibly die off. So, do not ever allow your cucumber to witness drought. Supply water at interval to your cucumber throughout it growth and maturity stage.
How Do I Know My Cucumber Needs Water?
There are a lot of ways to determine if your cucumber needs water. While these signs are true indication of lack of water, they are also indicator of other deficiency in your soil or cucumber. However, note that if you judge lack of water with these signs by the time you see them, a lot of damages must have been done. So, let see the signs:
- Cucumber leaves turn yellow
- Cucumber leaves start curling
- Cucumber fruits starts curving
- Misshapen cucumber
- Cucumber leaves start drying off
- Cucumber produces skinny cucumber fruits
- Cucumber flowers start falling off
Note that this might not all happen all at once, some signs comes as the cucumber plant grows while other might show up during flowering, maturity, fruit formation and down to fruit development.
How Do I Ensure My Cucumber Doesn’t Lack Water Ever?
The best way to handle this issue is to provide consistent water supply at adequate ratio to your cucumber garden or farm. You can setup drip irrigation system to supply water to your farm. This way, you can have a consistent supply of water at all time to your soil which keeps feeding the cucumber plant. While you are on that, it is also important you study your location weather, rainfall and temperature to ensure you don’t over water your cucumber plant. Click here to learn: 6 Best Ways to Water Your Cucumbers, Tomatoes & Watermelons
Low Temperatures
As much as very hot or high temperature causes misshapen cucumber, low temperatures are neither the best. I know you might be asking: Since Low and high temperature doesn’t work for cucumber, what works then? The answer is: warm temperatures
Cucumbers thrive in warm weather. So, stick to that as you grow your cucumber and to avoid misshapen cucumbers. One major importance of cucumber among many others is its ability to notify your cucumber plant that it is time to grow some leaves, time to grow flower, and most importantly time to fruit.
When Can We Say That Temperature Is Low?
The temperature is low when it drops below 60°F (16°C) consistently. It might differ in your area. So, try to ascertain what works in your location and avoid planting cucumbers when the temperature is below 60°F (16°C).
Effects Of Low Temperature On Cucumbers
- It causes cucumber to flower at the wrong stage
- It reduce pollen production
- It chases pollinators away.
- It limits bee activity.
- It causes incomplete pollination
Physical or manmade Barriers
As a cucumber farmer or garden, you should know by now that you should not allow your cucumber get pierced or be placed in any tight corner which will created a barrier to the cucumber fruit developing into its full length. You should always stack your cucumber. This way, they are up in the air and have enough space to develop. Stacking of cucumber solves the issue of misshapen cucumber. It gives your cucumber enough breathing space and keep them away from rodent, pest and bacteria from the soil.
Final Thought:
Misshapen cucumber doesn’t equal unhealthy cucumbers. They are healthy and safe to eat and the next time you see one in your garden or farm, I believe the knowledge you have gained here will come handy in determining the cause and what solution to apply to avoid future occurrences. Not just that I want to also believe that you learn the measures to put in place and avoid in-order to grow straight and greenish cucumber. Please join our community of farmers and gardeners where you get to learn from other farmers and interact with them. Click here to join now: Brilliant Tech Farmers Hub.
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