How to Grow Early Cucumbers in Open Ground: Advice from Summer Residents Who Don't Have a Greenhouse
Growing early cucumbers in open ground is a challenge for beginning gardeners.
But experienced gardeners who do not have a greenhouse know tricks that allow them to get an early harvest in a regular garden bed.
Subtleties of growing cucumbers in open ground
1. Choose the right place for planting. The one that receives the maximum amount of sunlight. It is also important that the place is protected from the wind. Ideally, the bed should be located near a brick wall, which will be heated by the sun during the day and give off heat at night.
2. Prepare the planting site. If you add a 2-3 cm layer of chopped fresh grass to the bottom of the planting hole, cover it with soil, and plant a cucumber on top, it will grow faster. The green grass will begin to "burn", warming the soil. And warm soil is the key to good plant development. Plus, green grass releases nitrogen, which is also necessary for a young cucumber.
3. Use the seedling method. Sow seeds for seedlings 30 days before planting in the ground. This will significantly speed up the production of the first fruits. Important: cucumbers do not tolerate picking, so they need to be planted in cups separately, and then remove the entire lump of earth from them so as not to damage the roots. Otherwise, the seedlings will stop growing for a long time.
4. Plant cucumbers correctly. If you don’t want to bother with seedlings, plant the seeds in open ground at a depth of about 2 cm in rows, leaving a distance of about 30 cm between them. But in order for the seeds to sprout quickly and not be damaged by pests, it is better to germinate the seeds. To do this, wrap them in a damp cloth and put them in a warm (25-30 degrees) place. Plant when roots appear.
5. Water with warm water. Cucumbers need moist soil, so make sure you water them regularly. The water should be warm. When transplanting seedlings, some gardeners pour boiling water into the hole so that the soil warms up, and then plant the plant.
6. To warm up the soil better, you can cover it with black mulch film. Black color attracts heat.
7. To keep the temperature higher under the film at night, experienced gardeners use a kind of radiator. They place plastic bottles of water (preferably dark ones) on the bed. The water heats up during the day and gradually gives off heat at night.
8. If you plant cucumbers in rows, you can dig a trench between the rows and put fresh manure in it or compact a layer of fresh grass. Fresh manure and grass will give off heat, warming both the air under the film at night and the soil around the trench.
9. To get the earliest possible harvest, cucumbers need to be covered with film or thick spunbond. If you try to do without them, you should wait with planting the plants in the garden until the beginning of June, otherwise the cucumbers may die.
You should also choose early maturing self-fertile hybrids for an early harvest. Avoid regular varieties, as even early varieties will yield a harvest later than self-fertile hybrids.
