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Gardening

Find tips and tricks to make your garden or allotment flourish on our Gardening forum.

Very fast growing cucumber seeds

9 replies

AllTheWhoresOfMalta · 29/02/2020 13:27

Started some seeds off this week, including these cucumber seeds which I only planted on Tuesday but which are already Invasion of the Triffids levels on my kitchen windowsill. They clearly need thinning out. I’m aware of this as a practice but not of how to do it in reality. Do I just pinch the little guys and transplant them? Have some of those little peat pots that are biodegradable.... one per little pot? I’m not an experienced gardener, as may be obvious.

Many thanks.

OP posts:
AllTheWhoresOfMalta · 29/02/2020 13:27

Picture would help wouldn’t it.

Very fast growing cucumber seeds
OP posts:
MereDintofPandiculation · 01/03/2020 12:13

Don't thin out yet. What you have there is the "seed leaves" or cotyledons, that store nutrient from the parent to get the new plant off to a good start. At this stage the stem is far too fragile, and if you try to thin out you will snap a lot of stems and kill the seedling. Wait until they have all developed try leaves, and the true leaves have reached about an inch across. Don't worry about rate of growth - it'll slow down enormously as the food reserves in the cotyledons runs out.

To thin out, this is how I'd tackle it: first slide a flat blade under the soil at the edge of the tray, and get an idea of how bound up with roots it is. If the soil is still free and crumbly, hold the most convenient seedling by its true leaves (not its stem), while gently teasing it out of the soil. Reach for pot while still holding seedling, put a thin layer of soil in the bottom, hold the seedling over the pot with its roots in the pot and the top of the roots just below the level of the rim. Scatter soil gently over the roots into the pot, shaking gently now and again so it settles, until the roots are covered, then firm down the soil with your thumbs, add a little bit more if there's still room (don't come quite to the top of the pot to allow for watering). Sometimes it's helpful to plant a bit lower in the pot, so the soil comes further up the stem and gives a bit of support. If the compost seems dry, water it gently. And in any case check in 24 hours and water gently if the top of the compost is dry. Try to keep the compost moist but not wet.

If the soil is a tangled mass of roots, find a bit where the planting is less dense, hold the soil in both hands, and simultaneously shake and gently pull your hands apart until you now have two pieces, each with some seedlings in. Repeat until you have a piece of soil with only one seedling, pot it up as above. And carry on.

MereDintofPandiculation · 01/03/2020 12:20

What I've described about is actually potting on, not thinning out. Thinning out is simply pulling out some of the seedlings as if they were weeds, so you don't have so many left. Again, I'd leave it till they've got true leaves and you're less likely to damage the ones that are left.

Next year, plant fewer seeds (Half a dozen cucumber plants is ample, so maybe plant 8 seeds to allow for losses), and plant each in its own pot. It can then grow on to be a small plant before you plant it out into a grow bag or whatever. One of my big gardening problems is I can't bear to throw seedlings away, so I always try to accommodate any extra plants. Nobody needs 25 purple sprouting plants! Fortunately, there seems to be a correlation between size of seed and how many years it stays viable, in that the big seeds stay viable for at least 3 years. There's no need to waste the seeds you don't plant, just keep them for next year, or the year after.

woodencoffeetable · 01/03/2020 12:21

as pp you need to wait for the first set of real leaves before thinning out.
unless you plan to grow them in a greenhouse you are about a month too early. I plan to sow my cucamelons at the end of this month.

woodencoffeetable · 01/03/2020 12:22

and cucumbers or anything from that family grows huge, unless you have a big alotment and a big apetite 2-3 plants are plenty.

BumblebeePlantMum · 03/03/2020 23:31

One of my big gardening problems is I can't bear to throw seedlings away, so I always try to accommodate any extra plants.

Same here. I close to 100 alpine strawberry plants because of this Blush

OP you can easily thin those out by snipping off the ones you don't want below the cotyledon. Honestly no-one in the world needs that many cucumbers!

I like snipping because then I don't have the urge to apologise to them, secretly pot them up and hide them from my husband

We had a handful of cucamelon plants last year and even they were a pain in the arse.

MereDintofPandiculation · 04/03/2020 09:00

Same here. I close to 100 alpine strawberry plants because of this Only 100? Grin Most of my garden has a ground cover of alpines (I presume alpines as, although small, they're not quite as small as wild). I keep them young and fresh by pulling up half each year - middle of the beds one year, edges the next. And if I want to plant anything, I just pull up strawberries.

BumblebeePlantMum · 04/03/2020 10:06

Ahh your garden sounds a dream. I'm slightly obsessed with wild strawberries. My husband wouldnt allow a ground cover though. I have wild strawberries in big strawberry pots, in little strawberry pots, in normal pots, in strawberry pots stacked up to make bigger strawberry pots Grin runnering PITA ones, runnerless tidy ones, yellow ones... they runner themselves into pots, cracks, walls, my garden table... I love them!

MereDintofPandiculation · 05/03/2020 10:10

I'm not so keen on picking them, though! They freeze well, so I pick a pudding basin full at a time, but it takes ages, and then there's the raspberries and tayberries and loganberries to pick as well, and when all that lot's finished I have to start on the mulberries.Part of me is almost glad when the berry picking season is over.

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