How To Grow Your Own Cucumbers Successfully At Home – Plus 3 Unusual Varieties To Try

Samuel Johnson, one of our most distinguished 18th-century writers and poets, drily noted that physicians he knew advised that cucumbers “should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing”.

Personally, I think Johnson’s doctor friends were missing a trick. And I’m not the only one; it wasn’t that long ago that a viral TikTok trend saw supermarket shelves emptied of cucumbers when social-media influencers, led by Logan Moffitt who was appropriately dubbed “the cucumber guy”, started sharing simple but delectable cucumber salad, sushi and pickling recipes.

There are few things more delicious, and cooling, than summer-picked cucumbers. Full of refreshing juice, cucumbers also have an unusually high water content, which is said to keep their flesh slightly cooler than that of other fruits. And so it’s no coincidence that this remarkable salad staple has been part of Asian cooking for centuries.

Not only was it first domesticated in India, at least 3,000 years ago, but it acts as the perfect counterbalance to warm spices and pungent herbs. The Ancient Greeks and Romans loved them, too, creating dishes that are now all but forgotten. “Cucumeres”, for example, seems to have involved gently braising cucumbers in oil, vinegar and honey.

The cucumber reached Britain by the 14th century, and grew more popular in the 17th century, but many treated it with distrust. John Parkinson, a botanist of the day and a fan of the elongated fruit, tried to persuade his readers that there were lots of useful things you could do with a “cowcumber”.

He suggested dressing it lightly with oil and vinegar, peeling it and slicing like a “dainty apple or pear”, or pickling little cucumbers (which he called “gerckens”) with dill or fennel, a method still used to make gherkins today. He also added that the seeds of cucumbers were excellent for making “the passages of urine slippery”, a treatment almost as baffling as the ailment itself.

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How to grow cucumbers

Anyway, back to the 21st century. Cucumbers like warmth. I grow mine in my greenhouse, but my brother-in-law, who lives in sunny Sussex, raises his outdoors.

Either way, seeds like being started off indoors in small pots of well-watered compost. Once your seedlings have two pairs of leaves, you can pot them up in tubs or, after the last frost, plant them outside in a well-mulched raised bed or patch of soil.

lady holding a terracotta pot with cucumber plants growing

To be honest, three or four cucumber plants will provide plenty of fruit, so I often buy my cucumbers as plug plants rather than waste a whole packet of seeds. I also use big pots, not because cucumber roots are particularly sprawling, but larger vessels (at least 15 litres) are better at retaining moisture.

Cucumbers also like to scramble and will climb up any structure you provide for them. I have fun with this and train my cucumbers to crawl around lines of strings I’ve tied to the roof and staging of the greenhouse, so I can pick them off overhead.

Outside, they’ll climb up fencing, trellis, wigwams or netting, providing vertical interest and freeing up valuable ground space.

When will the plants produce fruit?

Like lots of fruits that originate from warmer climes, such as tomatoes, I have found that smaller cucumbers ripen first, around July, and are more prolific. Larger varieties, by contrast, come into their own at the end of the season, around early autumn. Grow a miniature variety and a bigger one to ensure you’ll be harvesting fresh crops for months. Picking regularly, as well as keeping everything well-watered and fed with a comfrey or tomato feed, will encourage even more growth.

a lady's hand picking a ripe cucumber from a plant

Picking the right variety

There are fascinating varieties and I’ve sampled some weird and wonderful ones, such as the ‘Crystal Apple’ (which resembles its namesake fruit), the long ‘Chinese Snake’ and the ghostly ‘White Wonder’. There are stalwarts that just want to grow – ‘La Diva’, ‘Marketmore’, ‘Baby’ or anything that says “heavy yielding” on the packet – although I find you sometimes swap flavour for productivity.

The best varieties for gherkins produce lots of small, crunchy fruit designed to be picked young. Try ‘Piccolo di Parigi’, ‘Venlo’ or ‘Vert Petit de Paris’. Pickle them, braise them, barbecue them, turn them into a chilled soup – the choices are endless.

The only thing you shouldn’t do, under any circumstance, is slice them, dress with pepper and vinegar, and then throw them out…

Three unusual cucumber varieties to try

Cucamelons

These have a citrus tang and look like dolls’-house watermelons. They’re snackable right off the vine but make jewel-like pickles if you can resist.

Photo Getty Images/Westend61//Getty Images

‘Crystal Lemon’

This spherical, sunshine-yellow variety has flesh that’s mild, sweet and refreshing. Slice into salads or pickle for something unexpected.

Maksims Grigorjevs//Getty Images

‘Poona Kheera’

This Indian cucumber starts life lime green, then ripens to an astonishing orange. It remains exceptionally crisp and crunchy, even when fully mature.

See more from Sally's smallholding by watching our video series with Sally here and on Country Living's YouTube channel.