Cucumber plants - totally confused

[NobbyNobbs]

My BIL gave me a small cucumber plant which has now grown to triffid proportions. It's still inside my house in the sunniest of positions.

I have no idea how to get cucumbers from it. Some website say to remove all male flowers otherwise the pollination will cause you have a bitter tasting fruit. Some others suggest using a brush to pollinate the female flowers yourself.

I have no idea what I'm doing! Help please!

I've only grown them in a greenhouse and did nothing, but got loads of lovely cucumbers.

It will depend on the variety - some are female only and you don’t have to do anything.

if it produces male and female flowers, then I believe you would need to pollinate to get fruit (?) assuming you keep them inside and they don’t have access to pollinating insects. Looking online it seems to recommend removing them for indoor varieties but absolutely must keep them for outdoor varieties, but I have never done this. I would have thought that removing male flowers would result in no fruit, as it indicates a need for cross-pollination?

I have read elsewhere that the main reason cucumbers become bitter is letting them get stressed (not enough water, excessive hear spells).

I’ve always pollinated cucumbers with a small paint brush.
It’s what my nan did so it’s what I do.

I don't do anything to mine! They do get big.

I grow them outside usually and just let them get on with it but has been too wet this year. Always have lots of cucumbers.

Leave it to do its own thing. Feed regularly, don’t let it get thirsty but otherwise let it grow as it wants. It will start making fruit as the season progresses.

Oh, and it’s rare to get bitter cucumbers these days unless it’s a stress response. It’s been bred out of them.

The regimes our grandparents had for cucumbers are mostly redundant in modern varieties, which are self fertile, less bitter and don’t cause burping.

If you get bitter cucumbers, cut it in half and slide the cut faces of the two halves against each other until a bit of juice starts to form at the sides, and then wash it off. It gets the bitterness out.

Don’t get rid of the male flowers, if you do you’re likely to get no fruit off the plant. You could stick the pot outside in the hope that a passing bee or other insect pollinates it. Or you could take a small paintbrush, brush pollen from the male flower ( Google to help you identify) onto the female flower.

I've never done anything to mine, didn't know you were supposed to.

Thanks everyone