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Bitter Cucumbers?

Bartholomew

Bartholomew

Big Brotha Bart
So, I don't know about you guys, but I like the feeling of eating the freshly grown vegetables and fruits that I grow in my backyard. Every year my family and I plant lots of fruits and vegetables in our back yard. This yer we had to cut low on some of the seeds and plants we bought so we got about 7 cucumber plants, and 4 tomato plants, 2 basil plants, 1 habanero plant, 2 jalapeño plants, and a couple of cilantro plant. We love our cucumbers and we were so excited about harvesting them. Once we got the first ripe ones off, we prepared them and started to eat them and we noticed they were too bitter. We couldnt finish eating them because they were just too bitter so we had to throw them out.. We shrugged it off thinking it was just going to be the first ones tasting so bitter. Once we collected the next batch, they were also bitter, then I started wondering about that. My uncle has a veggie garden as well and it is much bigger than ours, but when he brought up the subject, I asked him if his cucumbers were tasting bitter and he said yes. So it got me wondering... Is it just a coincidence that both of our cucumber plants are bitter? Does anyone ealse have a similar problem? Are there any botanists out there that know what's going on? Last year we had the same amount and they tasted great. Could it be the inclement weather? Or is this just a bad year for cucumbers? All the other fruits and vegetables taste just fine. Any comments greatly appreciated. :)
 
Probably the soil and weird heatwave everywhere except where I am. Any little thing could be the cause. Rainfall could also contribute.

Our tomatoes are pretty consistent every year. Not sure why...
 
pH? It can influence things more than you think.

My grandfather said you can't (shouldn't) plant certain things next to other things.

I.e., I have no idea. LOL.
 
Ha. I don't grow my own cucumbers and just buy them in the store. Our walmart sells a lot of locally grown produce and I thought the bitter cucumbers were due to a lot of pesticides. Guess I was wrong!
But I know what you mean, they were just ikky - not at all what I wanted to bite into when I looked forward to a nice cold cucumber /sigh
 
Our cucumbers always had bitter peels. I don't know why, but they were fine as long as we peeled them.
 
vetusvates said:
pH? It can influence things more than you think.

My grandfather said you can't (shouldn't) plant certain things next to other things.

I.e., I have no idea. LOL.
Click to expand...

We planted some around a peach tree..? But the rest are still bitter and they are far from the other plants... I'm going to look up some about that pH. Thanks for the input!

Stefanie said:
Ha. I don't grow my own cucumbers and just buy them in the store. Our walmart sells a lot of locally grown produce and I thought the bitter cucumbers were due to a lot of pesticides. Guess I was wrong!
But I know what you mean, they were just ikky - not at all what I wanted to bite into when I looked forward to a nice cold cucumber /sigh
Click to expand...

At least now I know my Uncle and I are not the only ones with bitter cucumbers.. We usually dont buy our cucumbers anymore. Haha.

ceduke said:
Our cucumbers always had bitter peels. I don't know why, but they were fine as long as we peeled them.
Click to expand...

Ours are the same way, it seems as the peel is just the bitter part, but we all love the peel. We're just crazy like that, Haha.

----
And It just seems weird to me that just this year the cucumbers are bitter. The past years they have been fine...
 
I did notice in the past years if I let them grow too big, they were bitter. If I picked them before they got to huge dill pickle size, I had no problem.

No cukes for me this year. The vines dried up and died before the cukes got any size to them whatsoever!

Devon
 
Our cucumbers haven't been bitter this year at all. We started most of seeds but we did get a couple of plants from lowes after my dog knocked a tray of seeds over and we thought we wouldn't be able to salvage them... We now have around 25 plants growing along the fence, I've picked so many cucumbers!!! So many jars of pickles!

Our green beans did really weird this year... Our poles were well over 6 feet tall and the bean vines exceeded the poles and wrapped around themselves. I think it's all this crazy rain, too bad it doesn't cool the air any :-S
 
ceduke said:
Our cucumbers always had bitter peels. I don't know why, but they were fine as long as we peeled them.
Click to expand...

The ones I've purchased were bitter to the core. Very ikky. Maybe that WAS pesticides! /shrug

Bartholomew said:
At least now I know my Uncle and I are not the only ones with bitter cucumbers.. We usually dont buy our cucumbers anymore. Haha.
Click to expand...

One day I'll have my own garden /dream. That'll be so nice! Though the first thing I'd grow is tomatoes lol. I do envy you though! Just 5 more years ..........
 
Ah I think I'll be able to do it, but we're in the military and move every 3-5 years. We tend to rent houses where we're stationed, and usually the landlords or the space doesn't permit us having a veggie garden. But in 5 years my husband retires and we can try to settle down ;-) Yummmm, bring on the veggies!
 
It could be the strain of cucumbers you purchased. Some strains are created especially to be made into pickles, not to be eaten as regular cucumbers.
 
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