396 Cucumber Success Tips

Today, we dive into the world of cucumbers, the second most popular crop among backyard gardeners. Debbie Flower shares her expertise on cucumber varieties, growing techniques, and addressing common issues like bitterness. We discuss the importance of starting with fresh seeds, maintaining warm soil, and ensuring consistent moisture for optimal growth. Debbie also explains how to identify and manage male and female flowers, trellising for space optimization, as well as pest and disease management. (Originally aired in May, 2023)

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Pictured: Cucumbers Growing on a Trellis

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Chapters

• 0:50 Cucumber Success Tips, Pt. 1
• 11:36 Beyond the Garden Basics Newsletter
• 13:23 Cucumber Success Tips, Pt. 2

Transcript

396 Cucumber Success Tips TRANSCRIPT

Farmer Fred:

According to one national poll of backyard gardeners, cucumbers are the second favorite crop for growing. In a poll conducted by the National Gardening Association, 86% of gardeners cited growing tomatoes as their favorite, and cucumbers came in number two. 

How do you grow and enjoy cucumbers? We’ve got the varieties, the growing techniques, the harvesting tips and advice on how to get rid of the bitterness of certain cucumbers. America’s favorite retired college horticulture professor, Debbie Flower,has the tips.

It’s Episode 396 of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast: Cucumber Success Tips. By popular demand, originally aired in May of 2023.

We’re podcasting from the Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory. Let’s go! 

CUCUMBER SUCCESS TIPS, Pt. 1

Farmer Fred:   

Awhile back we were talking about the top 10 vegetables that are grown by gardeners in these United States. And I was surprised to learn that the number two most popular vegetable grown in the United States are cucumbers. Who knew? I thought it would be peppers, or maybe zucchini. No. Zucchini was number six; sweet peppers were number three. Cucumbers were number two. I'm not a big fan of cucumbers. But I know someone who is. 

Debbie Flower

Yeah. I love cucumbers! 

Farmer Fred

That would be Debbie Flower America's favorite retired college horticultural professor, who loves cucumbers. 

Debbie Flower

I do. 

Farmer Fred

But my heavens, cucumbers have a lot of problems. And I bet sometime this summer we're going to hear from people who say, “What happened to my cucumbers? The flowers look funny. The fruit looks funny, it tastes bad.” What's going on?

Debbie Flower    

What's going on? Well, cucumbers are a vine. And so they need some space. They are in the cucurbitaceae family, so they have boy flowers and girl flowers. And that's part of the pollination problem. That, and they need regular moisture. If you let the plants dry out between irrigations, that's when your fruit tastes bad. There's more and more breeding going on to prevent that. We're getting closer to the season of erratic watering, but basically the soil needs to be moist, not wet, but moist, all the time. So cucumbers are a warm season plant, a warm season annual. They need soil temperatures to be quite warm when you seed them. And you typically want to direct seed them, not start them ahead of time. 

Farmer Fred

Sounds like zucchini. 

Debbie Flower

Like zucchini, like melons, like pumpkins. Those plants are all similar in that when they get root bound in a container, it dwarfs them and they will never grow very big. You do it once in your gardening life and you’ll remember it. It's such a disappointment. So, I just tried my second time planting my cucumber seeds. Yesterday, I planted some old seeds and that might be my problem. In general, you don't want to keep seeds more than two years and these were two year old seeds. And I stored them correctly, dry, in the refrigerator, over the two years, but they just didn't germinate. So yesterday I planted fresh seed. So I would advise starting with fresh seed, planted directly when your night temperatures have settled at 50 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit or greater. They need six to eight hours of sun, that's considered full sun. They need well drained, fertile soil and regular moisture. 

Farmer Fred

Can you grow them in containers? 

Debbie Flower

You can. There are some bush type cucumbers that are smaller and can be grown in containers. But the containers should be pretty big, 15 to 25 inches tall and across, or a half barrel. Make sure the pots have drainage holes and if they are dark color on the outside, wrap them in aluminum foil or paint them white or put something some with a lighter color on the outside somehow.

Farmer Fred   

According to the Cucumber heads at UC Davis, they recommend for container-grown cucumbers these varieties: Pickle Bush, Potluck, Park’s Bush Whopper, Salad bush, Spacemaster, and Bush champion.

Debbie Flower  

Notice the word “Bush” is used a lot.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, that tells you something about it. I would think, though, that much like zucchini, some early season disappointments with cucumbers would be: you see the flowers, you get excited. But either there's no fruit, or what fruit develops, doesn't look very good.

Debbie Flower   

And doesn't last. Yeah, it's very small and it turns yellow and falls off. That's because it has two types of flowers,  the male flower and the female flower. And the flowers themselves, to the untrained eye, look exactly the same. But when you look at the stem that attaches the flower to the plan, you get a clue. Male flowers attach with a straight stem, and  female flowers are attached to what looks like a baby cucumber. And that's  the fruit that will form if it gets pollinated. So actually, the insides of the flowers are different from each other. One has the pollen and the other one has the stigmatic surface that receives the pollen and allows the pollination to occur and the fruit to form. So it's a morning job for the pollinator, which can be bees, or it can be you. They worked on solving this a lot in breeding, so it isn't quite as pronounced as it used to be. But the first bunch of flowers used to all be males. Now it's the first few. And there were no females in sight, but the pollen has to be ripe. And the stigmatic surface has to be receptive. And there has to be a pollinator there to move the pollen from the boy flower to the girl flower. So it's a morning job. You can get up, go outside. I take off the male flower, take off the petals, and touch the tip of the male flower to the inside of the female flower. And that transfers the pollen and then you're going to get fruit. 

Farmer Fred  

You don't even need an artist’s brush. 

Debbie Flower

No, you don't. 

Farmer Fred

That's pretty nifty, if you are doing it  that way. I would think, though, that weather plays a big part in successful pollination. These flowers are only going to develop when the temperature is in a certain range,

Debbie Flower 

Right. These are warm season crops. And so, if you have very fluctuating temperatures, you may not get them.

Farmer Fred  

If it's too cold or too hot. Either the male or the female won't cooperate, right? It's probably the female that is uncooperative.

Debbie Flower  

I'd say the male. I know they always want to play but…

Farmer Fred 

Yeah, we're always ready. But no, if it's too hot or they get headaches or something. I don't know. Blossom end rot. I wouldn't think blossom end rot would be a problem outside of tomatoes and peppers.

Debbie Flower  

I've seen it on squash. Yeah, I had one growing in a compost pile. I just let it grow. And it got blossom end rot. And you will read that it is due to calcium insufficiency in the fruit. And that's probably what it is. But in most cases, there's enough calcium available in the soil for plants to take it up. There's just not a regular source of water to take it to the plant roots. And so it comes back to regular watering again,

Farmer Fred  

When choosing a cucumber variety, we talked about what's best for a container, the Bush types. But for consumption, what is the difference between a slicing cucumber and a pickling cucumber?

Debbie Flower  

As far as I noticed, it’s size. The pickling cucumbers tend to only grow to be cigar size or smaller, a few inches, four to six inches and not really fat. I don't know if anybody else remembers getting the cucumber out of the…barrel in the local store.

Farmer Fred  

For a second there, I thought you're gonna say Crackerjack box.

Debbie Flower 

I never got one of those in a Crackerjack box! If you had that barrel experience, you can picture the size of the cucumber. What we buy in the store now is all cut up in various ways. But I have pickling cucumbers that are regular slicing cucumbers, and I probably didn't get the texture that would be what the pickle connoisseur might look for, because of the amount of water in the fruit, etc, etc. But I just would pick them young and pickle them or slice them; or, pickle them when there were a lot left.

Farmer Fred 

One nice thing about cucumbers, because they require a warm soil in order to get started, they actually mature rather quickly.

Debbie Flower   

Yeah, they're fast growers. They take off once they're out of the ground, as long as they have nutritious soil and about an inch of water a week. So, they’ll mature in about two months or so. Two months to get a fruit. 

Farmer Fred

All right. So you could plant in June and have cucumbers by the end of August. 

Debbie Flower

Yes, it's cucumber planting season. 

Farmer Fred

Do you plant them the same way that you would plant zucchini or summer squash, six on a hill? And then thin them out to the strongest one? Or, as some people do, ignore them at let them take over the garden.

Debbie Flower   

On seed packets I don’t see a discussion of the hill as much. But the packets do mention to plant several in one location and then thin them out. And you need to space them, depending on whether you're going to trellis them or not. They could be as little as 12 inches apart if you're going to grow a vine and cucumber on a trellis, although I find that to be a little close. Or, you could let them sprawl across the ground, in which they need to be five or six feet apart.

Farmer Fred   

That brings up another good point. We have received a lot of emails in the past, from people who grow cucumbers on trellises. And they seem to really like that.

Debbie Flower  

I like that, too. 

Farmer Fred

Tell us about that. 

Debbie Flower

Cucumbers have tendrils which occur in the leaf node. That’s where the leaf is attached, and they can wrap themselves around something thin, but they can't wrap themselves around a piece of bamboo, for example. That's a little too big. But something thin, like a cattle panel or string. Some people make a structure and have string hanging down from it. And when the tendrils touch it, there is a plant response to touch. The tendrils wind themselves around the trellis. If you don't have the right diameter  for the  tendril to twist around, you can always use old stockings, which I don't wear anymore, to encase the fruit and tie it up or to tie the plant itself to the structure that you're using as a trellis.

Farmer Fred  

You're in the 21st century now. We now would use out of date USB cables.

Debbie Flower  

There you go. Yes. I've seen baby underwear, children's underwear, to cradle the fruit. That's clever. 

Farmer Fred  

Out at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center, they have repurposed some old umbrella frames. You know how umbrella fabric get torn in the wind, but the frame is intact. So they have mounted these umbrella frames in the soil, and run strings down from the bare arms. They anchor the strings or small rope into the ground and allow either beans or cucumbers or whatever to spiral their way up to the top. 

Debbie Flower

Nice. 

Farmer Fred

I would think I would want something stronger. Like you mentioned, a piece of cattle fencing or some sort of 12 gauge wire or six inch mesh, maybe even concrete reinforcement wire, but that might be a little flimsy right? But you could still do it that way.

Debbie Flower 

 I grew it on a trellis that went above my head, and of course the plant grew up there. And then I couldn't reach the fruit. So beware.

Farmer Fred   

Okay. I wonder if it would work on a pallet that has been placed on an angle and supported by T-posts? We talked about that method with Gail Pothour, Master Gardener, recently. She was using it to grow Butter Belly squash. And it had no trouble attaching to the wooden slats. They crawled right up. Now I don't know if a cucumber would do that. Because you said it couldn't grip it.

Debbie Flower 

Yeah. But squash typically has a tendril, as well. So maybe the roughness of the wood leaves little splinters that they can wrap around. 

Farmer Fred   

Both for the plant and in your hand. 

Debbie Flower

Yes.

BEYOND THE GARDEN BASICS NEWSLETTER

Farmer Fred:

One question I have been getting a lot of lately: Should I prune off (snip off, pinch out) the first tomato flowers that appear, in order to get more tomatoes later?

We tackle that question in the latest edition of the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter and podcast, with Master Gardener and vegetable expert Gail Pothour. Here’s a hint to the answer: not really. However, there are a few instances when pruning parts of your tomato plants can be beneficial.

It’s all in the June 13, 2025 edition of the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, entitled, “Prune tomato flowers?” This newsletter edition is available now, in its entirety, for both free and paid subscribers.

Paid Subscribers have added perks. We have a new Monday edition that is just for paid subscribers, last week it was all about tips for harvesting garlic and onions to allow them to last for months. 

Another benefit of being a paid subscriber to Beyond the Garden Basics: paid subscribers also have complete access to the previous posts of the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, of which there are now over 200 editions.

By the way, your paid subscription to the newsletter supports not only the ongoing efforts to produce the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, but also helps keep the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast freely available each week.

Find out more information about the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter in several places, including today’s show notes, at our home page, Garden Basics dot net, at Farmer Fred dot com, or… at Substack. 

And thank you for your support and encouragement to keep the good gardening conversation going. 

CUCUMBER SUCCESS TIPS, Pt. 2

Farmer Fred

Let's talk about some cucumber pests that might come your way. According to the University of California's Integrated Pest Management site, among the invertebrate pests that can attack your cucumbers are: aphids, armyworms, crickets, cucumber beetles, cutworms darkling beetles, dried fruit beetles, earwigs, flea beetles, grasshoppers, leaf hoppers, leaf miners, loopers, nematodes, seed corn maggots, snails and slugs. Also Spider mites, squash bugs, stink bugs, thrips, whiteflies, wire worms. What are your favorites on that list? 

Debbie Flower   

Wow, that's a lot of things. Yeah, a lot of those are sort of, I want to say, generalized pest problems, such as aphids that you'll see on many garden plants. Cutworms just like seedlings. And so when you plant the seed in the ground, you put a collar around it of some sort. I have this box of mini Dixie Cups in my house, and I came across this recently and thought, what do I have these for? Well, I used to pop the bottoms out and push the little cup into the soil around the seedling. Cutworms travel near the surface of the soil over to the seedling, and chew around the stem.

Farmer Fred  

 Do earwigs do the same thing?, Earwigs get a bad rap because they are usually going after dead organic matter and are only going to go after a plant if there's nothing else there. Right?

Debbie Flower    

If you don't have a lot of organic matter for them to eat, then they'll go after a plant.

Farmer Fred    

So a Dixie cup would solve that issue for earwigs, too.

Debbie Flower  

I suppose so. I don't think they can get into it. But they could climb that you know. You find them in buds and things but I don't know that they could climb a Dixie Cup. The other thing my mother used to use was half an empty toilet paper tube, when the toilet paper is gone.

Farmer Fred   

And that's another way to trap earwigs as well. 

Debbie Flower

Yes, it is. But moist. 

Farmer Fred

Yeah, moisten it up, and stick it in a dark place near where they are. They might just crawl in.

Debbie Flower    

They would go in there during the day. Yes, that's a possibility.

Farmer Fred    

However you bring up an interesting new sport that may take off in fraternities. It would be to take a Dixie cup, and have earwig races to see if they can crawl up and in. Place the Dixie cup upright over a plant. That way they'd have to sort of have to climb up and outward. 

Debbie Flower

Yeah, they'd have to climb out. Right. And it's waxy. Yeah. 

Farmer Fred

And you know, you could toughen it up by having a moat below that of vegetable oil that they would drown in yes.

Debbie Flower    

If they fell, that would be the end of them Yeah. There are traps for earwigs. For aphids, you hit him with a spray of water. If you're growing on the ground, they are always on the back of the leafs. They may be in other parts of the plant too. But if you've got aphids on a cucumber, they're going to be on the back of the leaves. And that's a hard place to spray with water if you're growing on the ground.

Farmer Fred    

Cucumber beetles seem aptly named. 

Debbie Flower    

Yes, they do. But I can't say I've ever had them as a problem.

Farmer Fred  

But they also have a lot of close relatives as well. The squash bugs go after the plants as well. And the problem with cucumber beetles, is it just glancing at it, you might say, “oh, look at the cute Ladybug”. And it's not a ladybug.  It's a Western spotted cucumber beetle. 

Debbie Flower    

Right. And there are there are spotted ones and striped ones. And they can introduce a bacterium into the plant. So that is one that you really want to have some control over.

Farmer Fred    

Now it says here, according to the University of California, that most older plants can support substantial numbers of pests without serious damage. The best strategy for most vegetable gardens may be to place protective cloth over emerging plants and remove it when the plants are old enough to tolerate damage. There you go. Row covers.

Debbie Flower  

Row covers. Yes, yeah, that would work for a lot of pests. Yes, it does. Keeps them away.

Farmer Fred  

Well, since we're on the subject of Bad Voodoo for cucumbers, the diseases that can strike cucumbers as they're growing in your yard have sad names like damping off, powdery mildew, downy mildew phytophthora, root rot. Wow. 

Debbie Flower  

Cucumbers are susceptible, obviously. But yeah, root rot is a soil borne disease that in areas where there's too much water. And we talked about having to water those cucumbers a lot. And there are some issues with it. One would be Phytophthora. Another would be fusarium and verticillium, which are also soilborne. And if you know you have those problems, especially the fusarium and verticillium, you can get resistant cultivars.

Farmer Fred   

So look for letters such as V and F on the seed packet.

Debbie Flower  

To avoid diseases, right. Yeah, the phytophthora, many plants get that, but you need a lot of standing water. Another plant problem for cucumbers is Alternaria or leaf spot. The older leaves will turn brown and get crispy and start to fall off. And that's due to free water. And many diseases do. Both bacterial and fungal diseases need standing water. That means a droplet of water on the plant in order for the spore of the disease to germinate and enter the plant. And so if you're irrigating overhead, and I do I use micro emitters in my garden, and so it sprays on the plants. The plants do get wet, and so that wetness can allow the diseases to form. But I make sure that I water very early in the morning. And I live in a very dry climate. And so by the time the sun is up, I've just watered. It dries up so fast that these diseases can't infect the plants. If you're in a much more humid place, that's not going to happen necessarily, you're not going to get that drying to happen. And you're probably gonna get more rain, which  can cause that water to be there for the diseases to form. And so you may need to increase your spacing, so that the plant can get more airflow. Trellising would be a really good idea so that the plant can get more airflow, and it can all dry out. Also,  look for those resistant cultivars.

Farmer Fred   

Yeah, I'm surprised at some of the recommendations on the back of some seed packets for cucumbers where talk about spacing, to thin them out so that they're five feet apart.

Debbie Flower  

Yeah, that would be if you're not trellising them, right. Although the plants, you know, we put them in, and we got these little tiny plants, but they get big by the end of the season.

Farmer Fred  

Well, there's that too. And then there's the process of thinning them out much like zucchini. People may be reluctant because they don’t want to hurt that little plant, right? 

Debbie Flower  

People don't want to thin. Thinning should be cutting the plant at the soil level with a sharp tool, such as scissors. Or pruning shears. Leaving the roots alone, so that you're not disturbing the roots of the one you're keeping. And I don't know how many people that I've said that to. And then I watch them pull the plant out and move it to someplace else. Survival is sometimes, yes, and sometimes no. Yeah, people don't want to kill the plant. And I understand that completely. But realize, I don't plant according to the package directions, I don't plant three to a hill and then take two out or whatever. If I'm suspicious that my seed is is old and not going to grow very well or it's something that's difficult to get to germinate, I will plant more than one. But then I'll come back and cut that puppy out, the extra one.

Farmer Fred    

By the way, she doesn't literally mean a puppy.

Debbie Flower    

I'll cut that plant out. But I don't like some seed packages. It will say, “plant one every two inches and then come back and thin to every 12 inches”. Like really, why should you regularly get rid of all these extra plants? 

Farmer Fred

They're in business to make money. 

Debbie Flower

They are. Realize that when you read the seed packet. Seed packets are wonderful. They have so much information. They're so worth reading. And I love reading them. But some stuff like that irritates me.

Farmer Fred  

Yeah, I can understand that. One of the more common complaints about cucumbers though, is as they mature, and folks go to bite into it, it's bitter. What causes the bitterness and how the you get rid of it?

Debbie Flower   

It's the irregular watering that causes the bitterness. And I've heard all kinds of things. And I don't know if they're all old wives’ tales, or what. But it's pretty difficult to get rid of it. Removing the skin can help. I had a friend who said cut off the end, just a little bit of the end, and then rub it back and forth over what's left and you get this frothy stuff and that gets rid of the bitterness, I'm not sure about that.

Farmer Fred  

There is something to cutting it off. Cutting off the ends and taking the skin off.

Debbie Flower    

Yes, that helps remove some of the bitterness. Not always all of it, though. So the bitterness occurs mostly in the stem end. So that's the end of the fruit that was attached to the plant. And take off the skin. So if you do get a bitter cucumber, and I've actually purchased one or two from the grocery store, and then found them to be such, you want to take that stem end off and a little bit of the fruit and then peel the cucumber completely. And if it's still bitter, maybe peel another layer off.

Farmer Fred    

So the stem end would be the end that doesn't come to a point. That would have a scar on it. Right? 

Debbie Flower

Yes, yes. Yeah. 

Farmer Fred

And I would think, too, that harvesting when they're fairly young might help mitigate bitterness.

Debbie Flower    

Because it's a chemical that forms over time in the in the fruit. And the longer it stays on the plant, the more of that chemical that can form.

Farmer Fred    

So slicing cucumbers, probably eight to 10 inches is harvest time?

Debbie Flower  

Right or not. I grow Chelsea Prize and they can get to be 15 inches.

Farmer Fred   

if you disappear for a day.  And the pickling types, even small ones, eat those about when they are three or four inches long?The little ones? Yeah, okay. I imagine cucumbers do not play well with weeds either. So you do want to weed any patch where you're going to plant cucumbers, right? Especially if it's bindweed or Bermuda grass.

Debbie Flower   

The cucumbers are heavy feeders and they want everything to themselves. They don't share well.

Farmer Fred    

You haven't mentioned all your favorite cucumber varieties.

Debbie Flower  

I've grown Straight 8 quite a bit. But my favorite is Chelsea Prize. I try other ones periodically. And then I come back to Chelsea Prize.

Farmer Fred    

When we were talking to Gail Pothour, local master gardener and vegetable head, a few weeks ago about cucumbers, she likes to grow heirloom cucumbers and her favorites were Green Fingers Silver Slicer, Alibi Armenian cucumber.

Debbie Flower   

I don't like Armenian. I grew them one year and I didn't like them at all. I don't know what it is about me and that one.

Farmer Fred  

Burpless cucumbers. Is there such a thing?

Debbie Flower  

There are many that are marketed as burpless. I don't have the burping problem. I can't attest to how effective they are.

Farmer Fred  

Cucumbers, though, if you're fond of them, you can grow it, and then when you harvest it, I guess you can eat it fresh, put it into stir fry, or make pickles.

Debbie Flower    

Or salads. There are some good cucumber salads, with dill and yogurt.

Farmer Fred    

ew. Why don't you just throw tuna in the mix?

Debbie Flower  

Oh, that sounds good.

Farmer Fred  

All right, anything else on cucumbers?

Debbie Flower  

If you're growing the cucumber, either trellising it or if growing them on the ground, mulching the soil is a good idea. It helps retain the moisture that you have applied to the soil, and slows down the loss of soil moisture from that soil. And we know we want that even moisture for the plant so that we don't get the bitterness. The other is, if you are allowing the plant to grow on the ground as a market farmer might do, because it takes more time and effort to trellis the cucumber. But you still will want to go around and maybe put some straw underneath each fruit so that they do not rot from touching that moist soil.

Farmer Fred  

I'm waiting for your annual vegetable buying advice: when you go to a nursery how to pick out a cucurbit plant. It's not easy.

Debbie Flower  

I prefer to direct seed them. Because if there are too many leaves, true leaves, on the plant, it's an indication the plant is rootbound. And it will never grow very big. So what's that mean? Often they're sold in a three or four inch pot, that's the distance across the top of the pot. And they often look like they've just germinated. So they will have what are called the cotyledons. On those initial leaves, teach one looks like a half of a bean. That's the seed food that that came in the seed, that the plant had started from. And then they'll have what are the true leaves, which tend to have pointy tips to them, and they might be hairy. And three, I wouldn't buy anything with more than three true leaves. So it would be the cotyledons plus three true leaves in a three or four inch pot. And if I'm feeling bold, I'll just knock that puppy out of the pot carefully, correctly. Putting my hand over the top and my fingers around the stem, tipping the whole thing over as if I were pouring it out, squeezing the container, pull it out. The media will be fairly well knitted together by the roots. And I will look at that root system. If there are lots of roots on the outside of that bunch of media that I just poured out, I won't buy that plant. 

Farmer Fred    

Especially if those roots are going round and round. Can you really untangle a squash plant or a cucumber plant? Or does that damage the roots?

Debbie Flower  

It would damage the roots. Cutting the roots, which I do with great regularity on anything I plant would also damage the roots and they just can't take it. I did it once. I probably started it myself in a container and put it in the ground and the leaves never got bigger than my my hand and cucumber leaves can get very big and the vine never got more than three feet long.

Farmer Fred  

So again with cucumbers: plant directly from seed and apply regular water. Is very irregular watering a reason for bitterness as well? 

Debbie Flower   

If it was irregular watering, yes. Irregular watering and blossom end rot would be due to irregular watering. But you don't want it sitting in water. You want it well drained. So if you have soil that retains a lot of moisture, like clay soil, make a mound and plant on the top of the mound.

Farmer Fred    

I tell you what; those container-grown cucumbers sound better and easier.

Debbie Flower  

 Especially for the moisture, it’s hard to keep a container moist. 

Farmer Fred  

yes, it is. But again, a pot inside a pot. That can help. Alright, cucumbers. It's the number two most popular backyard garden vegetable grown. You might want to give it a try this year. Thanks, Debbie.

Debbie Flower  

Thank you Fred.

(originally aired on Ep. 266, May 2023)

Farmer Fred:

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred comes out every Friday. Garden Basics is available wherever podcasts are handed out. For more information about the podcast, as well as an accurate transcript of the podcast, visit our website, GardenBasics.net. And thank you so much for listening and your support.