Video by Nicole Johnsey Burke showing why cucumber plants can have many flowers but few or no fruit and giving three clear fixes: (1) Identify flower sex — cucumbers have male and female flowers and early blooms are usually male (she observed ~90% male on her mom's plants); (2) Ensure pollination — pollen must be moved from male to female flowers (by bees/butterflies or hand-pollination with a small paintbrush, recommended once a week in early morning/late evening); (3) Address nutrition and plant focus — plants often need phosphorus to set fruit (add compost, bone meal, blood meal or finished chicken manure) and prune lower leaves to direct energy to fruit. Other specifics: seeds were planted ~45 days before filming; cucumbers in the Easy Garden Kit can be harvested in less than 65 days; she recommends planting zinnias to attract pollinators.
Questions this video answers
Approximately 45 days.
At least 90% (she observed at least 90% male flowers).
About once a week, in the late evening or early morning.
Less than 65 days.
Compost, bone meal, blood meal, or finished chicken manure.
Chapters
Is your cucumber plant covered in flowers, but there's no fruit in sight? Same. Don't panic. This is one of the most common problems when it comes to growing cucumbers. And today I'm going to show you exactly why it happens and what you can do about it. If your cucumber plant looks really healthy, just like this one, bright green leaves, long vines, beautiful tendrils, but you're still not getting any cucumbers. The problem really comes down to three factors. And once you understand how to address these three things, you'll know exactly how to get cucumbers from your plants. Hey there, it's me from the future.
Today is exactly two weeks since we filmed this video.
You're about to watch all about making cucumbers grow on your vines. And let me tell you, you better.
Watch this video because my mom just sent me a text two days ago and she's like, nicole, do you want to come harvest these cucumbers or should I? And I'm like, what are you talking about, mom? And let me show you what she was talking about. Now, she's already given eight cucumbers away to her neighbor.
But right here on this one vine.
This one side, we've got 1, 2.
3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. On this side we have 1, 2.
3, 4th, 5, 6, 7,8, 9. We have over 20 cucumbers growing on these two vines.
All because we followed the three steps.
That you are about to watch in this video. So don't scroll, don't pass up this video. This is going to show you exactly.
How to get more cucumbers.
It worked for my mom.
It's going to work for you too. So. So start watching. Today I'm back in my mom and dad's brand new kitchen garden. If you missed the install, you got to go watch that video after you see this one. So we planted these cucumbers from our Easy Garden Kit seeds. We put the cucumber seeds right along this trellis. And it was just about 45 days ago that we put these seeds in the soil. These seeds took off. They were one of the first things to grow in the garden. And man, they have been climbing this trellis every single day, growing up literally like weeds. But mom called me this week. She said, nicole, my cucumber plants look beautiful, but I haven't gotten one single cucumber. And I said, mom, don't worry, I'm coming over. I'm going to fix it for you. So if you've had the same problem, where your cucumbers take off, they're looking so promising, and yet you search and.
Search and don't see any cucumbers.
You are not alone. The same problem happens to me, my friends, my clients, even my mom. So let's take a look at my mom's cucumbers. We'll look at each of these three factors. Family. Fix her cucumbers so you can fix yours too. Factor number one are the flowers. Most people, including me and probably my mom, don't know that cucumbers have two types of flowers, not just one. Yes, they're all yellow, but some flowers are male and some flowers are female. And surprise, surprise, the male flowers, they don't produce cucumbers. They don't produce any fruit. Only the female flowers do. So how do you know the difference? Well, male flowers, they have a straight stem right behind them. They're not going to have any bulge. Any sign of a cucumber behind them, it's just a long, straight stem. And then the flower, the female flower, is totally different. It's going to have a little bulge right behind the flower. Something that looks like a tiny little baby cucumber. That's a sign that it's a female. Now, on a new plant like these, the. The first flowers that appear, not the female ones, it's the male flowers that show up first. In fact, on inspection of my mom's plants, at least 90% of the flowers on her plant are male flowers. So it's not that there's a problem with the flowers on her plant, it's just that she doesn't have a lot of female flowers yet. But we're not in trouble. This plant has been growing for only 45 days in the garden. We're at the very early stages of growth for this plant plant. It's going to go up and over this trellis over the next 10, 15, 25 days. And then the female flowers, they're really going to show up. So step number one is just to identify which flowers are male and which flowers are female. If you're not seeing a lot of female flowers yet, it's a good sign that your plant just needs to mature and grow more. So label your flowers male or female. Look at the female flowers closely, and if they're producing fruit, you're well on your way to getting cucumbers eventually. But if you've got a lot of female flowers and you're still not seeing fruit, you gotta move on to factor number two. All right, so let's say we are coming back to this garden in about 10 days. We're at the 55 to 60 day mark from the cucumber seed planting and we're still seeing little to no fruit. Now we've got to take into consideration factor number two, which is pollination. So you've got male flowers on your cucumber plants and, and you've got female flowers. And did you know that in order to get a cucumber off of every female flower, pollen has to be transferred from the male flower into the female flower? Probably not just once, maybe several times during the growth of that cucumber. And if the pollen doesn't move from the male flower into the female flower at the start of the growth of that cucumber, and then continuously through that period of the cucumber growing bigger and bigger, you won't end up with a nice cucumber harvest or off of your vines, even if they look beautiful and packed with flowers. So when that's the case, you want to troubleshoot in several different ways. Pollination is the magic that moves pollen from male to female flowers. And generally we want this to happen simply by nature doing its magic from bees, butterflies and other pollinating wildlife moving the pollen themselves because they love to gather pollen for their own benefit. And so as they move that pollen from one flower to the next, they're benefiting nature's benefiting, and we get more cucumbers. The way to get more bees, butterflies and pollinating wildlife into your garden is to plant more food for them. You want to have native plants in your garden space. You want to have lots of flowers that are all around your cucumbers, all kinds of flowers that would be blooming right at the same time that your cucumber is growing so that the bees and butterflies are flocking to your space and just happen to bump into all your cucumber flowers along the way. Now, when we arrived to my mom's backyard, it was just grass and some arbor vita trees. She didn't have native plants, she doesn't have any flowers growing here. It's not her fault, she just moved in. We have plans to add in lots of native plants and pollinator friendly flowers, but right now all she's got is the kitchen garden. So we know we might have to step in and do the work of the bees and butterflies while we wait on the flowers to show up. And that's where you take a little paintbrush and start to do the work of the bees yourself. This is a simple act you can do late in the evening, early in the morning. You're just going to take a little paintbrush and, and just lightly move the pollen from male flowers over into female flowers. Just take your paintbrush, scoop up a little bit of pollen from the male flower, and then move it over to the female flower. Do this once a week, in the late evening or the early morning, move that pollen over. You're going to start to see more and more cucumbers forming on all your vines, even if you don't have a lot of flowers in your landscape. But take this as a lesson that you need more flowers, you need more native plants. If you're seeing female flowers, you're even moving the pollen around with your paintbrush, but you're still not getting many cucumbers. Then you've got to consider factor number three. Factor number three is nutrition. So these plants need nitrogen to jump up and start growing. And we can tell from the health of these plants they got plenty of nitrogen. The leaves are such a nice dark green, and these vines are just climbing like crazy. So we know they've got plenty of nitrogen. And we can guess that they probably got a good amount of potassium as well, because it looks like these plants are super sturdy. They don't look small, spindly, or weak. It seems that their roots have had plenty of nutrients to get settled and to support these plants. But if you start to see that you don't have many fruit forming on your plants, then it's probably a phosphorus problem. Phosphorus is a nutrient that supports flowering and fruiting, especially on plants like cucumbers. So if you've got really healthy vines, you can tell that the leaves are nice and green, but you're still not getting a lot of fruit. Then you might want to add a little bit of natural organic amendments right to the bottom of your cucumbers. That increases intake of phosphorus, especially when you get to the fruiting part of the growth. So a little bit of phosphorus could be added with some compost. That's my favorite way to do this. But you could also add a little bone meal or blood meal or even just some chicken manure that you're sure has been finished. Any way that you can get a little bit more phosphorus in the soil right at the base of these plants can give that plant a little boost and help it start to put its attention toward finishing that flower. You can also do a little bit of pruning. You can cut back some of these lower leaves, especially the leaves that are below the lowest flower. This is going to encourage the plant to put more of its attention toward the fruit toward finishing the fruit rather than just creating so many leaves. Remember, pruning is a way to tell your plant where to put its attention. So adding a little bit of compost, a little bit of nutrients, and then doing a little bit of pruning at the bottom of your plant, and that can tell your plant, hey, you've got the food that you need and you've got the energy you need. So put your attention toward making me some cucumbers. The fixes for cucumbers are so easy, and that's because growing cucumbers literally couldn't be easier. That's why I put it in my Easy Garden Kit. Cucumbers are one of 10 plants that you can grow directly from seed, planted in the ground, and get a harvest in less than 65 days. The easy Garden Kit comes with this growing guide that gives you the step by step to grow all 10 of these plants. And I'll put a link to the Easy Garden Kit right below this video. Now, the way to get bees. The easiest way to get bees to get yourself some more cucumbers is to plant zinnia seeds. They're included in the Easy Garden Kit, and I have a whole video that shows you exactly how to grow them from seed in the soil right next to your cucumbers. In fact, mom, we're going to plant some right now. Go watch that video right now. It's all about growing zinnias. You're going to have zinnias and cucumbers all together at once.
