From snackers and slicers to picklers and teensy types you can add to a cocktail, cucumbers are easy to grow and prolific. This season, choose some more unusual varieties that will add color, crunch and flavor to your vegetable selection.
Cucumber's cousin
A prolific choice is a Mexican sour gherkin, which is a cucumber relative. The cucamelon plant grows smaller and produces plenty of grape-sized fruits that resemble miniature watermelons! Harvest them early and they'll have fewer seeds and a little bit of a sour flavor. Use them in cocktails or salads.
Heirloom, traditional cukes and new cukes
A crunchy and delicious heirloom type to try includes the lemon cucumber, which grows a hand-ball size fruit that starts out with a white peel that eventually fades to a yellow shade. Harvest these cukes before they fade too much to ensure there aren't tons of seeds inside.
If you're looking for a great type to eat straight from the vine without peeling it, try the crunchy and mild-flavored Silver Slicer.
For color and flavor variety, reach for the types of cukes that you can trellis, like Poona Kheera from India. This cuke begins green and its peel turns brown as it ripens — it's shaped more like a potato than a cucumber!
The Brown Russian cucumber also matures with a brown-peel and both of these types last long in storage or in a refrigerator for weeks.
If you're looking for variety in appearance, try out the striped Armenian cukes, which grow to a foot and can also be eaten, peel and all. These are heat-loving and grow well in an unheated greenhouse or a hoop house.
A newish type of "snacker" or cocktail cucumbers are available at grocery stores, but why not plant your own batch? This type is parthenocarpic, meaning the plant will produce fruit without cross-pollination from bees and grows well in a small space, like a raised bed or container.
These are often grown in greenhouses, but you can grow them up a string trellis. As it grows, prune off all the side leaders and pick them when they're 3 to 4 inches long.
Whichever type you choose to grow, if pests and diseases plague your cucumber patch, try growing them in a straw bale. This can keep cucumber beetles and diseases at bay since they're elevated off the ground.
Q: We had what I would call a severe freeze ... and many of the tulip leaves did not look the same the next morning when it warmed up. This is the third year the tulips pictured would have bloomed. The prior two years they looked lovely and seemed quite vigorous. If all my tulips on the property looked like these I'd easily say it was the freeze, but sections of various gardens have what is pictured and others look like nothing ever happened. All the tulips in the gardens are either in the first, second or third year of blooming. The ones that are blooming this year for the first time do seem to have fared best. If it was indeed the freeze, is there any hope for them next year and the future? - Anne, via email
A: This could, indeed, be freeze damage, however, based on the photo, it looks a lot like a disease called tulip fire. It's a Botrytis fungus that attacks tulips, and causes them to have that purple coloring and causes the leaves to curl.
The fungus usually lives in the soil, especially if it's not very well drained, or in soil where you're growing tulips year after year.
If you're going to plant more tulips next year, try planting them in a different garden space. Then, remove any leaves and bulbs from the space. The disease can be on the bulb itself so get rid of those and start with a fresh batch of tulips next year.
Q: For reasons unknown, our daffodil beds are producing lots of green leaves this year, but relatively few blossoms. These are established beds that have produced abundantly in the past. Some have suggested an overapplication of nitrogen-rich fertilizer, but I am observing the same behavior in daffodil beds owned by neighbors, as well as in volunteer patches in the woods. This leads me to suspect a weather-related response, perhaps adverse weather conditions last fall. Any thoughts on the matter? - David, in Woodstock
A: If your daffodil beds are in a lawn, the bulbs are competing with the grasses. The daffodils will grow well for a couple years, and then begin competing with the grasses - especially if you're not fertilizing the lawn. Eventually, you'll see only daffodil leaves but no flowers.
Another possibility is that there are small bulblets attached to the mother bulb, and those are taking energy away. If that's the case, once those leaves start yellowing in your lawn, dig up the bulbs and see if there are several smaller bulbs attached.
Knock those bulblets off and reset the main bulb in the lawn or place them elsewhere. Take a photo of where you place the daffodil bulbs, then come fall, fertilize the area where the bulbs are and hopefully that will help them blossom again next spring.
Updated for the 2026 growing season! Subscribe to Sprouted, our free, 10-week email course for beginning to intermediate gardeners.
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