Cucumber is a vigorous plant and with training can be pushed to yield significantly more fruit. One of the methods of accomplishing this is to train it up a string to a horizontal wire. Another method is arc training (which I am not describing now), but this can take up significant space. Yield is significantly higher though.
Ideally the string should be about 2.5 meters high, but this will work with more or less. The horizontal wire should be a meter in length or slightly greater for each plant.
-Allow the string to be slightly loose, as slack will be required to wind the string around the vine as it climbs, but anchoring it somehow is a good idea (though not essential)
1. Starting with a seedling planted at the base of the string, gently wind the vine around the string. Try to get one full rotation of the string around each inter-node (space between leaf nodes).
Take care not to put excessive stress on the vine, but ensure that at least 5 inter-nodes are wound fully to support the weight of the cucumbers in -the beginning.
-On the journey up the string, leave every third fruit and remove the rest. This will allow enough leaves to be on the plant proportional to the number of fruit. A general rule is to ensure 3 leaves for every cucumber.
-Also remove any suckers (grow tips) on the way up except for the main leader. This gives all energy to the leader and it will climb quickly.
2. This is important: Once the vine reaches the wire ALLOW suckers to grow. Train the leader in one direction on the wire (whichever is not stressing the vine, and train one of the suckers in the other. Try to pick one closest to the T intersect, leaving the other ones to grow. If the one is damaged from training (they are fairly delicate) you have a backup on the leader.
-wrap both vines twice around the wire as they grow to give the vine support, then sending them down.
-Choose another sucker on each vine (at the top) and wind each of them twice around the wire.
-Remove unused suckers on first vine intersections
3. Once each of the first two vine reaches about 75cm from the ground (or less perhaps in a raised growbed), pinch off the growing tip.
4. Harvest cukes as they become desirable size; if there are several larger cukes growing at the bottom of a vine, remove younger fruit higher up to give more nutrition to where it's needed.
-Continue to remove emerging fruit and suckers from the first vertical vine up the center, you want all energy for the hanging vines.
-Also remove any suckers below the wire on the hanging vines to keep growth in the fruit.
5. Once fruit is picked from the first inner pair of vines, begin removing the vine, being considerate of how many leaves are on the plant compared to number of fruit (3 to 1), with the aim of removing the whole vine below the wire.
-Removing non-producing vines promotes new growth, but removing too many leaves at once will result in fruit abortion on newer vines.
-Also remove any necrotic leaves (usually from the older leaves on the base vine)
6. Continue this process until the plant is no longer productive (a fair while), you can loop back over the vine on the wire to keep horizontal reach down.
Here is some useful literature pertaining to cucumbers:
-Reading the Cucumber plant
http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department ... ll/opp4556
-Nutrient Disorders
http://www.agric.nsw.gov.au/reader/7388
-Early Crop management
http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department ... ll/opp4594
(Veggieboy) if you have not solved your stem splitting problem yet here is another potential reason on this page:
If the root zone goes above 21C-22C it can result in stem splitting.
A (very) basic image to show the layout visually (excluding leaves):
| Attachments: |
|
Cuke stringing.jpg [ 10.97 KiB | Viewed 9069 times ] |
stuffed that up, will give the cukes a go when they get growing....now if you would like to know about the toms......
