Cucumbers From Farm to Fork
Welcome to my page all about cucumbers! Here you will find farm to fork information from recipes, planting, and harvesting tips for all things cucs. If I’m being honest my favorite between farm and fork is the fork, duh! I know there are some folks that really enjoy the gardening end of things, but spoiler alert, I’m in it for the food.
So let’s start there here are some quick links to help you navigate through all the farm to fork topics on cucumbers.
Quick Links to Topics on this Page:
- Favorite Cucumber Recipes
- Cucumbers: Fruit or Vegetable?
- Planting Cucumbers
- Maintenance for Cucumber Vines
- Harvesting Cucumbers
- Preserving and Keeping Cucumbers Fresh
Favorite Cucumber Recipes
Below are a few of our favorite cucumber recipes that we look forward to making year after year. I hope you enjoy them and feel free to share your favorite recipes with me! I’m always looking for new recipes to change up our daily grub in the summer months with our many cucumbers.
Cucumbers: Fruit or Vegetable?
Cucumbers grow from flowers and contain seeds, so botanically it is considered a fruit, but I consider them a vegetable because of how they are used in the culinary setting. Cucumbers are simple to grow and tend to flourish in a well-kept garden. I can remember bringing laundry baskets full of cucumbers to mom playdates and bible study free for the taking.
Planting Cucumbers
If this is your first garden consider reading Gardening 101 to get off to a good start. We plant cucumber seeds straight in the ground typically in a circular mound of dirt with 4-5 seeds per mound, but they can also be transplanted. They grow well in the warm season and should be planted after the threat of frost has passed. Cucumbers need room to sprawl so they should not be planted too near other crops as they will cross-pollinate. I will never forget the year we grew cucumber melons 🙂
Maintenance for Cucumber Vines
Cucumbers require frequent watering. If they do not get enough water they can stop producing or produce bitter cucumbers. Keeping the weeds down will also promote growth and not choke the new plants out. Keep the plants watered and weeded and they will produce cucumbers many times over. Two or three plants will produce enough for most families. Not our family, but most families 🙂
Harvesting Cucumbers
When picking ripe cucumbers carefully cut them off the vine with a knife or pruning shears leaving a small stem on the end. This will help the stem end from rotting in storage.
Preserving and Keeping Cucumbers Fresh
There are not many ways to keep cucumbers lasting much over a week unless you are canning or pickling. Some tips for prolonging their freshness is to keep them directly in a vegetable drawer with a paper towel to collect moisture. They will last about a week, but of course, freshly picked cucumbers taste best.
If I have time I whip up a batch of the 24 Hour Cucumber Salad and store it in the fridge or prepare refrigerator pickles if I can’t possibly eat one more cucumber in the near future.
I usually end up giving away tons of cucumbers each summer as it’s hard to keep up with their production fruit.
Blog Posts about Hobby Farming
Check out the blog for more information about what’s new at Barton Craft & Barn including the following post about our hobby farming experiences.
Failure to Thrive
There are affiliate links in this post. I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you. The garden is associated with so many life lessons, I’ll share one here about failing to thrive. Working in the garden, which I will admit was not always my favorite task, has become a…
What is Hobby Farming?
What is hobby farming? The pros and cons of having a hobby farm. And what is in the mystery box? bartoncraftbarn.com
New Beginnings
We had some new beginnings on the farm this weekend…the ducklings are here! Is there anything cuter than baby ducks? These sweet ducklings arrived yesterday, all the way from California! We love them already! The kids are still working on names, but they have already claimed a favorite. They are determined to bond with them…
Just Getting Started Gardening?
I put together a list of my top garden tools to help the newbie get the needed gardening essentials. If you are getting started gardening, or want to be more prepared this season, check out the printable in my free resource library for my favorite garden tools to get your gardening on. Hope you enjoy!
