Types of cucumbers (including and not cucumber) - photo and description
Contents ✓
- ✓ Armenian cucumber (photo 1)
- ✓ Chinese cucumber (photo 4)
- ✓ Italian cucumber (photo 2)
- ✓ White cucumbers (photo 5)
- ✓ Cucumber-lemon (photo 3)
- ✓ Snake cucumber (photo 6)
- ✓ Indian cucumber (photo 7)
- ✓ Red cucumber, tladiate (photo 10)
- ✓ Mouse cucumber, melody (photo 8)
- ✓ Kivano (photo 9)
- ✓ Types of cucumbers - photo to the description above
Vegetables which are called cucumbers
Our people are inquisitive. Now many of the little things have become available, for example, seeds of exotic vegetables, which are better or worse, but can be grown in our climate. And many of the tops and fruits are sometimes distant, but resemble cucumbers. And it went with the light hand of fellow citizens who "desired the strange": Indian, snake, Armenian, and the like "cucumbers"; African, Indian generally need to be quoted twice, since they have the same relation to cucumbers as an airplane to a dragonfly - only to the extent that both have wings ...
Let's start with what lies closer to our habitual cucumber.
Armenian cucumber (photo 1)
More likely not even a cucumber, but something close to a melon. If you imagine melon as a handball, from which the air was let out and it wrinkled a little, that’s about what it will be. The color of the ripe fruit is straw, weight - about a kilogram. Scourge produces multi-meter (3,5-4 m). They are very thermophilic, bear fruit for a long time, and they have a strange taste: cucumber-immature melon. Go to food mainly like pumpkin, in boiled or baked form.
Chinese cucumber (photo 4)
Again not quite a cucumber. Under this name are a variety of intergeneric pumpkin hybrids, mainly cucumber-lagenaria. The fruits are quite a cucumber species, but long - from half a meter to a meter. They have a good cucumber taste, almost do not get sick, are fruitful. They are interesting because the shape of the fruit will immediately “prosaforize” the gardener what they want from life: a hook is a cry of “little nitrogen!”, A pear - “come on with potassium! etc. This "dictionary" can be very voluminous, and in order not to guess the shape of the fruit, provide them with a soil balanced in terms of macro- and microelements. And good support: this is a three-meter "scout".
Reference by topic: Cultivation of Chinese cucumbers
Italian cucumber (photo 2)
Essentially the same as the Armenian one. Slightly smaller, with a slightly more melon taste. The homeland of selection forms is clear from the name. In the national kitchen are used as zucchini.
White cucumbers (photo 5)
The most “cucumber” from our review. These are quite normal cucumbers, but the variety is such that the peel of the fetus is almost devoid of chlorophyll and not pigmented. They are pale pale yellow or a drop of greenish, in comparison with ordinary ones they look snow-white. They look interesting in the bank along with the usual ones.
The cultivation culture is no different from traditional. Taste and productivity - try it yourself: you have your own opinion about a couple of varieties, but it does not pretend to be objective. It seemed to me - pachyderms, of medium productivity, of taste, striving for mediocre. In general, what is now called "show-offs"!
Cucumber-lemon (photo 3)
In the same series, another real cucumber. If you put such a cucumber and lemon of a suitable size next to it, you can hardly distinguish them “offhand,” especially to an outsider. Much tastier than white cucumbers is the classic cucumber taste, nothing beyond the limits in agricultural technology (they are a little more thermophilic and like to drink more, and whip longer), but the shape and color of ripe fruits ... "Have you heard about annual lemons? .." - a question to the amazed neighbor, you look, and forget your eyes in your greenhouse.,. The variety is called Crystal Apple.
Reference by topic: Cucumber-lemon crystal apple - PHOTO and growing
And now about the fact that in a systematic relation to the genus the "cucumber" does not sit close, but nevertheless appears among the people under that name.
Snake cucumber (photo 6)
The trihozant is a South Asian pumpkin liana, due to the rapid entry into the fruiting stage, it manages to bear fruit in our seasonal climate. Imagine a five-meter-long whip of pumpkins on a pedestal with which one and a half meter-long cucumbers are as thick as an adult's hand. And by no means straight - the snake raised by the tail will hang like a rope? So it is here. Like ordinary cucumbers, they are eaten immature. The interesting thing is that you can cut a piece from a large fruit, and it will continue to grow! The taste is very close to cucumber, with a pumpkin and salad shade. The plant is very large, very thermophilic.
Reference by topic: Trihozant (photo) - cultivation of serpentine cucumber
Indian cucumber (photo 7)
Momordica.
Perhaps the most exotic plant of cucumbers, as it were, has nothing to do with cucumbers. A powerful liana with large decorative foliage (leaves resemble chestnut leaves), 10-centimeter yellow flowers, in place of which fruits are tied, similar in mature state to tuberous yellow-orange lemons. Ripening, they unfold with thick cusps (quite edible, pumpkin-like), becoming like open predatory jaws. And they bare the seeds covered with a juicy arillus - pericarp, unexpectedly different, sweet and sour taste. Heat-loving, not prohibitively difficult to grow, according to some sources, a medicinal liana.
More about growing Momordica here и here
Red cucumber, tladiate (photo 10)
Another non-cucumber cucumber that forms tubers with which it can be propagated. This five-meter tropical liana easily hibernates in our country in the form of tubers, growing overhead shoots every season. Adult plants bear fruit for a very long time and abundantly, and what's interesting: while the fruits are immature, they work like vegetables in salads and for preserving, and when they start to turn red they become something like a plum, almost turn into fruits and go for jam and compotes . Oh how!
Keep in mind: when growing a Tla-Diant in the Black Earth region, it can turn into a malicious weed, lime that is not easier than Jerusalem artichoke or Sakhalin buckwheat in the Northwest!
Mouse cucumber, melody (photo 8)
In nature, an annual large pumpkin liana, which our gardeners manage to bring to the state of seeds per season. In the tropical homeland, it "hides in the seeds" not from the cold, but from a lack of moisture - another type of seasonality. Again, a large vine. Only grown through seedlings.
It grows at a hurricane speed (almost at the speed of a clockwise movement!). Leaves are similar to greatly enlarged grape leaves, and flowers are like reduced zucchini. The fruits resemble elongated watermelons in color and shape, the size of two quail eggs, and comprise an emerald-colored translucent flesh surrounding the seeds.
To say that it tastes like a cucumber ... In principle, with a stretch it is possible. Not bad, pretty nice. Fruits, by the way, can be preserved in the same way as cucumbers. In general, entertainment rather than vegetable. And yet - on the roots tubers such as sweet potato are formed.
Kivano (photo 9)
Real exotic! All in all, in fairness, it must be said that this is the brother of our cucumber, albeit Afri-Kansky. From the same kind. But vidok! .. It's not without reason that they call him still a horned melon, and one acquaintance recommends planting it along the perimeter of the site if hooligans climb into your garden at night. To step (and even more so sit down) in the dark onto such a large “lemon”, covered with one and a half centimeter and spikes, is not a joke ... But it grows quite well, through seedlings. Liana is not so fundamental, not as thermophilic as the previous ones, but all the same, for guaranteed fruiting, a greenhouse is needed, at least in the Northwest.
The taste of the jelly-like pulp of kivano, filled with relatively large seeds, is rather difficult to describe. He is generally weak, unexpressed. But nice. And you can “move” it in the desired direction if you add salt, pepper or sweeten ... Fantasy food. And it’s usefulness! .. And vitamins, and minerals, and immunomodulators, and they say, hair after chemotherapy does not climb like that. And if you ask an African shaman! .. In general, pearl is for an exotic lover!
And yet our usual habit!
Types of cucumbers - photo to the description above
© Author: Dmitry VOLKOV, St. Petersburg
Below other entries on the topic "Dacha and garden - with their own hands"
- Mad cucumber - useful properties
- Chinese cucumber (photo) - varieties and cultivation of this miracle cucumber
- Cultivation of cucumbers - rules and whims
- Growing cucumbers on a window or balcony - varieties, shaping and care
- Instructions for growing cucumbers from an experienced summer resident (Moscow region)
- Amur cucumber variety - my cultivation reviews (Leningrad Oblast)
- Cucumbers at home - hybrids, cultivation and care, shaping and feeding
- Transplanting cucumbers into the open ground and care for planting
- Cucumbers with bush and pyramid
- Cucumbers for the Moscow region - which varieties are best planted? REVIEWS
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The number of chambers in a cucumber is a varietal feature, and this influence is rather doubtful for the development of female flowers. Seeds should not be taken from the first fruits, but from mass fruiting. The best germination is obtained by the largest seeds, most often at the base of the cucumber
(where it is attached to the mother plant), because there they receive more food. Although the location of the seeds in the fruit does not in any way affect the flavoring qualities of future greens.
Remove the seeds from the cucumber, when the fruit turns yellow and becomes watery inside or practically begins to rot the skin. Rinse them thoroughly in cold water (pop up on the surface of the cull), then dry until flowability. Store in a dark, dry place.
For tomato seeds, choose the largest and most beautiful, "exhibition" fruit. Put it in the sun on the windowsill. Allocate seeds when the tomato softens to such an extent that it will be difficult to take it by hand without crushing. Rinse and dry the resulting seeds.
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Where are the seeds better?
From an acquaintance I heard an unusual way of collecting seeds of cucumbers. On seeds, she selects those fruits in which the seed chamber is four-dimensional, and not with three divisions. He says that plants from such seeds then give more female flowers, and hence cucumbers. When the seed fruit becomes soft, it is cut not along, but across, and the seed-i chooses from the back part closer to the peduncle. He considers that the seeds are larger, and consequently, their germination is better. Then the seeds, together with the pulp, are put in a glass, 2-3 days ferment at room temperature. After washed, dips in water for a couple of minutes and discards the surfaced, and the remaining dries. But another friend says that you need to choose seeds, on the contrary, from the front of the cucumber, tk. of those that are in the back, grow bitter greens. Who is right?
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Not the first year on cucumbers small ovaries turn yellow and fall off. Why?
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Often cucumbers tie a lot of fruit and just throw off excess. The plant thus regulates the number of ovaries that can feed. Also, the reason may be a lack of nutrients in the soil (however, their excess, especially nitrogen, is also harmful - the whips grow rapidly, but there are no fruits). The weather also influences: cold snaps or sharp temperature changes. It is known that at a temperature of + 10 hail, plant roots cease to absorb nutrients, and growth stops.
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Homemade cucumbers: shock crops
I decided to share my experience ... A lot of people talk about that. how to grow cucumbers on the windowsill. But all the tips end with the collection of Zelentsy. What next? Thawed liana is thrown away? I am very sorry to throw away a healthy plant, but to keep it at home when this is no longer necessary is pointless. So I wanted to share what in this case I do.
Sow cucumbers begin in early February, sometimes even in late January, in peat pills. Sorts choose self-pollinating, I prefer with a bouquet type of flowering.
Sprinkled seedlings are planted in 10-liter flower pot, according to 2 tablets with plants. Care is most common: watering, fertilizing with a mullein, prischipki. All this was described
repeatedly, I can not say anything new. For additional illumination I use a foil for gifts, one side of which reflects the light very well. This foil is very plastic, unlike food.
With proper care cucumbers feed us from April until the warmest days.
When there is no need for room-grown cucumbers, I carry the container with the plants in the greenhouse. Yellowed leaves, weak shoots are removed. When the plants get used to the new conditions a little, I transfer them into a well filled with humus, and it is desirable to disturb the roots with roots as little as possible.
After some time, the creeper comes to, and a new wave of fruiting begins.
All summer harvest is excellent, until the frost. Scourge stretches almost
throughout the greenhouse. I try to develop under the roof. So the plant takes up little space, and in a greenhouse it is very important.
There is another advantage: in the heat, the liana is shaded by the plants growing under it. Regularly feed mullein, yeast solution. If the fruiting slows down, I clip all the large leaves with scissors.
Having survived the shock, the liana is renewed, and a new abundant wave of cucumber growth comes. Very serious competition for open ground cucumbers!
Thanks to this growing on our table, fresh cucumbers are not transferred, starting from April until late autumn.
I hope my experience will be of use to someone, I will be very happy.