New to veg growing?

As you know i am new to veg growing, i have been looking around for a good Greenhouse cucumber, a few people i spoke to recomend Femspot i think its a F1 variety, the next question i want to ask is are the seeds like normal plant seeds if i keep them will they come back true to the parent when sown?

thank you all

Res

 

Cucumbers eh? Minefield !!

There are outdoor, so called Ridge, cucumbers. On those you leave the male and female flowers on because they need to be fertilized to make the fruit.

Then there are Greenhouse Cucumbers. They don't need to be fertilized to make a fruit and, supposedly, if they are fertilized they taste bitter - but ignoring that fact you don't want your "supermarket style cucumbers" filled with seeds.

So Cucumbers have been bred that only produce Female flowers (so you don't have to keep picking the male flowers off the plant). (Note that they may produce a few Male flowers when they are very young, or if they are stressed, but generally they don't do that).

There are also (so called "old fashioned") greenhouse varieties that DO produce male flowers and you DO have to take them off.

Not withstanding that you can grow a Ridge cucumber in the greenhouse if you want, and there are grey-area varieties where you leave on / take off / hand mate whatever ...

But, generally:

Greenhouse cucumbers have sooth skins, should not be allowed to have any Male flowers

Outdoor cucumbers have rougher skins, and should be allowed to have both male and female flowers.

For those customers growing Greenhouse Cucumbers and only wanting Female flowers the breeders have managed to create a variety that only produces Female flowers. Neat Trick!! That saves having to be there when the male flowers appear and cut them off!

These are so called F1 (First Generation) crosses between two, different, pure bred strains. That F1 first generation cross has the magic characteristics that you are buying.

If you keep the seed from plants grow from F1 seed (any F1 seed, not just Cucumbers) it won't come true (you'll get an F2 Second Generation plant instead) ... but having said that, with an all-female flowering variety of Cucumbers you won't get any seeds anyway - they haven't figured out how to get the females flowers to do that on their own, otherwise the whole male species would be redundant, right?

F1 Cucumber seed is very expensive, and you typically only get 4 or so in a packet, but if you are careful they will all germinate and a couple of plants is all that a normal greenhouse / family needs.

Next instalment:

"Cucumbers wake up each morning thinking of a new way to die"

They are very fickle to grow ... do not allow the stems to get wet, they will rot. Red Spider love them. So do all sorts of mildew. But that apart, they are rewarding to grow and heavy croppers

 

Thank you so much Kristen,

I am so glad you grace these forums your such a wealth of information and always detailed in your responses.

Once again a big thank you
Res

 

My pleasure, good luck growing them :thumb: