Blog: Be cool as a cucumber with baby veg for confined spaces
I’m taking a step into the unknown, growing cucumbers from seed – take a gardening journey with me! I don’t eat them, so I’ve never grown cucumbers. This is much to the disgust of Gary and Vanessa, who love them.
The two varieties are Honey Plus Hybrid, a small plant reaching just 60cm and Party Time, which is tall at up to 2.2m but takes up a very small footprint. They are best under glass, so mine are growing in the conservatory. There’s no reason you couldn’t place them on a sunny windowsill or on a porch if you don’t have a greenhouse. Read about cucumber Merlin.
Cucumber Honey Plus Hybrid
Being such a small plant, Honey Plus Hybrid is easy to move about and harvest if you have mobility issues. One cucumber plant will yield 20-25, 7-9cm mini fruits with great flavour. Baby-sized Honey Plus Hybrid is an early variety, fruiting in just 40 days, with smooth pale-green to white skin. The fruits are crunchy, sweet as honey, with golden flesh.
The best for small spaces, as each plant only grows to 50-60cm. Each fruit is glossy, weighing between 155 and 225g. Use Honey Plus Hybrid’s cucumbers for snacking straight from the plant, in salads and even for pickling.
Cucumber Party Time
This variety is very easy to grow, as it is an all-female parthenocarpic variety (it produces fruit without the need for pollination and is seedless). Party Time is a snack-type, producing three or four fruits weighing 45g at every node every few days.
These crunchy, bite-sized fruits are perfect lunchbox snacks. Party Time has excellent resistance to powdery mildew and is best grown in an unheated greenhouse. It’s a tall plant at 2-2.2m, so maybe not best for your kitchen windowsill unless it is huge!
Potted guide: growing indoor cucumbers from seed
- Sow indoors from March to May. Germination usually takes 7-10 days at 20oC.
- Place each seed on its side, 1cm deep, in 7.5cm pots filled with moist, free-draining seed compost. Place pots in a propagator or seal them inside a plastic bag to retain moisture until the seed germinates.
- Seedlings can be prone to scorching, so shade them from direct sunlight. Cucumbers are sensitive to root disturbance, so take care when potting on.
- Plant greenhouse cucumbers at two plants per grow bag or 45cm apart.
- Plants will need to be trained up on supports. Pinch out the growing point once it reaches the top of its cane. Once fruit begins to develop, pinch out the end of each side shoot, leaving two leaves after each fruit. This helps to encourage more side shoots to grow and bigger crops.
- Keep cucumber plants well-watered and feed with a high potash mix every two weeks once fruits begin to develop.
- However, cucumbers hate having water around their neck. Plant on a raised mound to prevent water from pooling around it. Water from below rather than above.
- Harvest cucumbers while they are young and tender. Use secateurs or a sharp knife to remove fruit, ideally in the morning.
- Regular harvesting will encourage a longer fruiting period. Greenhouse cucumbers can fruit into October if the temperature remains high enough.
Growing cucumbers from seed – where to buy them
Party Time is available now from Simply Seed, Grow Seed, Owls Acre Seeds, Pennard Plants and Plants of Distinction. Honey Plus Hybrid is now widely available from a selection of UK seed companies.
