re cucumber.

hello.am i biting of more than i can chew. how to grow a cucumber plant in a pot in the greenhouse. easy or difficult. and best way to do this when to plant the seeds etc. thank you for looking. regards peter.

 

Hi Peter and welcome to GC.

It's perfectly possible to grow cucumbers in pots in the greenhouse. I grow mine in the greenhouse in large 10/15 litre pots with fairly good results each year.

A few suggestions.

Choose an F1 hybrid variety which only produces female flowers.
Sow just one seed at a time in a small pot, then plant it into the larger pot when the roots have filled the small pot.
Fill the large pot with a soil based compost, or some good garden soil with leaf mould added, cucumbers take up a lot of water on hot days, more 'open' composts containing a high proportion of peat will quickly be sucked dry by the cucumber plant with its large leaves.
Don't be in a hurry to sow the seeds in spring, late April/early May is soon enough, cucumbers dislike being cold and are more likely to fail as a result.

Hope you find this useful.

 

thanks for info trunky. il be patient and wait till spring.regards peter.

 

Not that I grow them anymore, but I think its the one greenhouse plant that people sow too early, it is really a plant of almost tropical conditions and it's not about how high the temperatures rise to during the day in a greenhouse, it's about how low they fall at night.

Good growing conditions are always about how low it goes, and when you bear in mind we can still be getting frost in late April, you have to admit it's a gamble getting cue seeds going before late April at the earliest.

If they get chilled they don't necessarily die, they just hang on, in suspended animation, making you think they are still viable, but once chilled there is no going back.

 

I usually sow in early to mid April, but bring them on in big pots in our heated porch before I plant out in a polytunnel in mid May. Cucs as far as I remember, don't like temperatures below 10C as it sets them back.