This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.
Secondary cucumber laterals?
bobmowattJKmZLYfc
Posts: 1
in Fruit & veg
I have grown cucumbers for the first time this year in my greenhouse. It is a type called Delikateb. It produces both male and female flowers and i have been removing the male flowers religiously.
I decided to use a more reliable source rather than Mr Google to read about how to grow ccumbers. I inherited my grandad's greenhouse book from WHSmith in 1984!
After giving it a good dusting and following the advice things are going good so far. I have two cucumber plants growing from a grow bag set on staging. They initially climbed up the cane, reached the roof slop and the tip is now at the top of the apex which i have now cut to stop it growing any further. The laterals from the main step in the roof slope are just starting to form.
Whilst the plant was growing i put up some wires end to end on the roof slop spaced about 8in apart. The plan is to then train the laterals from the main stem along the wires.
The book states:
"Laterals (side shoots) will form and should be tied to the nearest wire and led along. Female flowers should form on these laterals after about four leaves have developed. When a cucumber appears, stop the shoot bearing it about two leaves further on.".
I understand this but then i get confused about the next short sentence regarding secondary shoots:
"Secondary laterals should form and can be similarly trained". ????
How should secondary laterals be trained? I presume that there will be a number of secondary laterals that will grow out from the primary lateral. Do i keep them all and continue to train them all along the wire or do i just use one (if so which one before or after where the cucumber appears).
And/or are secondary shoots meant to be trained so they stay on the same original wire or are the meant to reach out to other wires so they all intermingle. I'm confused.com!
I decided to use a more reliable source rather than Mr Google to read about how to grow ccumbers. I inherited my grandad's greenhouse book from WHSmith in 1984!
After giving it a good dusting and following the advice things are going good so far. I have two cucumber plants growing from a grow bag set on staging. They initially climbed up the cane, reached the roof slop and the tip is now at the top of the apex which i have now cut to stop it growing any further. The laterals from the main step in the roof slope are just starting to form.
Whilst the plant was growing i put up some wires end to end on the roof slop spaced about 8in apart. The plan is to then train the laterals from the main stem along the wires.
The book states:
"Laterals (side shoots) will form and should be tied to the nearest wire and led along. Female flowers should form on these laterals after about four leaves have developed. When a cucumber appears, stop the shoot bearing it about two leaves further on.".
I understand this but then i get confused about the next short sentence regarding secondary shoots:
"Secondary laterals should form and can be similarly trained". ????
How should secondary laterals be trained? I presume that there will be a number of secondary laterals that will grow out from the primary lateral. Do i keep them all and continue to train them all along the wire or do i just use one (if so which one before or after where the cucumber appears).
And/or are secondary shoots meant to be trained so they stay on the same original wire or are the meant to reach out to other wires so they all intermingle. I'm confused.com!
0
Posts
I think of the cucumber vine like this:
The primary vine is the main vine.
A secondary vine is any vine that grows out from the primary vine.
A tertiary vine is any vine that grows out from the secondary vine.
So, when training, try to force the plant to form fruits on just the primary and secondary vines - this means removing all tertiary vines.
If space is an issue then keep all of the fruits on the primary vine and train it vertically up a bamboo pole or string. Once it reaches the top, you let it flop downwards (like how tomato vines are grown commercially in tall green houses). If you wanted to increase the numbers of fruits then include short lengths of secondary vines. Keeping it short means clipping off the growing tip of the secondaries.
Using the wire structure in your picture, train the secondaries along the wires at the roof of the green house.