Growing Chinese Cucumbers-China Long Hybrid

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This is an early maturing sooyow type cucumber. This type of cucumber has very spiny yet thin skin (顶花带刺). The skin does not require peeling, just wash the spines off and slice. The fruits grow 14-15” long, crisp with good flavor. Excellent for pickling and eating fresh. They’re also tolerant to heat and resistant to DM, PM, CMV and fusarium wilt. Plus they’re high yielding. Good for planting in open field and greenhouse.

The instruction from the seed company states: Prepare fertile, well-drained soil. Sow seeds in spring/summer after last frost in a warm, sunny location. Or start seeds indoors and transplant when weather warms. Keep soil moist. Fertilize as needed. Optimum growing temperatures are 75°F daytime and 60°F at night. Train to climb a vertical support for better air circulation, straighter fruits, and ease of harvest.

• Full sun (6 hours or more sunlight every day). Maturity: Approx. 50-60 days. Planting season: Late spring/early summer
• 11 China long hybrid cucumber seeds–this is what we offered in our Amazon store. Let’s see what we’ll harvest from 11 seeds.
• Seeds Depth: 1″, seeds spacing: 2-4″, thin to 10-12″, row distance: 24-36″. Germination Temperature: 78-86 degrees Fahrenheit

5/14/21. Soak the cucumber seeds for 24 hours. 100% germinated. Planted them in 4″ nursery pots. Brought them indoor at night to protect from any danger of frost.

5/26/21. Transplanted to ground.

6/5/21. Picture was taken in “Compost and Feed” project. The two plants marked 1 and 2 were planted in partial shade and didn’t developed healthy. They were removed later so only nine plants survived this season.

6/15/21. The first flower appeared. We kept training cucumbers to grow on the trellis-simply wrap or weave the stems into the trellis, and the tendrils will eventually grab it on their own.

6/28/21. Harvested first cucumber.

7/11/21. A lost of fruits on the vine.

There is maintenance needed to maximize the yield: watering, pruning, fertilizing and spraying.

Watering the cucumber plants.

Water every 2-3 days deeply. Better to water the root/soil in the morning, not on the leaves. Optionally, you can install underground clay water pots so less watering is needed.

Pruning the cucumber plants.

Google “how to prune cucumber plants” and you will find all sorts of methods. To minimize the effort, we pruned twice, plus continuously removing damaged/diseased leaves when we noticed them.

6/15/21. Prune #1- Remove any flowers/suckers on lower five leaf nodes.

7/22/2021. Prune #2-Pinch out the tip once it had reached the top of the trellis.

Fertilizing the cucumber plants. 

At Planting Time. Create planting hole or mound from 50% soil, and 50% compost.

Between May and September, apply worm tea once every two weeks.

Week 1 to Week 3 after transplanting. In 2020, we used organic slow release fertilizer: Dr. Earth Organic All Purpose Fertilizer (5-5-5) (purchased at local Home Depot store), 1/2 tablespoon per plant per week. In 2021. We tested synthetic plant food: Schultz nursery plus slow release plant food (12-6-6), purchased at local Menards store, 1/4 teaspoon per plant per week.

After flowering until late September. In 2020, we used Dr. Earth Organic Tomato, Vegetable & Herb Fertilizer (4-6-3), 1/2 table spoon per plant per week. In 2021. we applied Schultz Slow-Release Bloom Fertilizer (12-24-12), 1/2 teaspoon per plant per week.

The result? In 2020, we harvested 165 cucumbers out of 10 plants. In 2021, we’ve gotten 201 cucumbers out of 9 plants. Here are 2021 numbers:

July 2021: 81 cucumbers.

August 2021: 68 cucumbers.

Sep 2021: 41 cucumbers.

Oct 2021: 11 cucumbers. First frost day in 2021 was Oct 18.

See the numbers? 75% of the cucumbers were harvested in July and August. Some friends made successive plantings (direct sow on July 15th) for continued harvests through the season. In warm soil, cucumbers grew quickly and ripen in about 6-7 weeks. If you have plenty of space, you might want to do that. Because cucumbers and others belonging to the cucurbit family should not be planted in the same area every year to preserve soil nutrients and to reduce the likelihood of infectious disease of insects eventually damaging your crop.

Spraying the cucumber plants. We didn’t spray the cucumber plants in 2020 but added it in 2021 after reading many recommendations online. every 7-10 days, spray neem oil as an anti-fungal from June to August. 1.5 teaspoon neem oil per quart of water, add several drops of Dr. Bronner’s Organic Castile Liquid Soap (dish soap works too). Spray all the cucumber leaves top and bottom in late afternoon (otherwise the oil droplets under direct sun will burn the leaves). This is really a tedious job. We even purchased a gadget to make things easier: ITISLL Garden Pump Sprayer with telescopic wand. Still, we decided to give it up next year.

After two years of experiments, we concluded that it was worth all the effort it took to grow these Chinese cucumbers. It’s easy to grow with high yield, plus we got those crispy and slightly sweet cucumbers that won’t be seen in any store. Why not?