Do you have any giant cucumbers in your fields?
If you answered yes, go on out to the field and cut one open.
Does it have some mature cucumber seed in there?
If not, you can leave other big fruit to keep maturing before trying again. The seeds will keep maturing too. You can do this with the giant cukes that are on or off the vine.
Now if you do have some mature seed, is that seed an open pollinated variety? (That means it isn’t a hybrid or has an F1 name.)
One more question – Is this the only cucumber variety anyone (including your neighbours) is growing in a 1500’ radius?
Well if you’ve been answering yes, Yes, YES! ,,, well, then you can save the seed from that cucumber variety for next year’s market garden.
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If you are someone who only grows one cucumber variety in a 1500ft radius and it happens to be an OP, you should be saving that seed.
But if you happen to grow many varieties close together, then cucumbers are probably not for your #seedsavingformarketgrowers bucket list.
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Yes, it would be easy to tweak your growing a bit to make it possible to save cucumber seeds.
But should you?
If you’re only growing OPs, you’re probably only spending $20 to $50 a year or so for an ounce or two of cucumber seed. That isn’t the savings that will suddenly make your farm more profitable.
I think you should focus on other seed crops first for your marker garden. And only come back for cucumber seeds when you’re ready to take it to the next level.
The PROS of saving Cucumber seed:
- Very easy to extract the seed
- There are some great open pollinated varieties
- Annual – from seed to seed in 1 season
The CONS of saving Cucumber seed:
- Crossers gonna cross
- Plants become a jumble and it can be tough to select the best plants with the best fruit
SEED YIELD:
3 lbs to 6 lbs from a 100ft bed
SEED LIFE:
4 to 6 years
