Why does a cuke do this?

It started out as a long thin baby. Now this as it is maturing.

And this...

The rest of the cukes are fairly normal.

Usually (If it is a regular not a seedless cuke) It is due to a lack of pollination. It is a multiple seed fruit and each seed has to pollinated. Your second photo is common, but your first photo is unusual. Enter it in the photo contest this fall.

Thank you Farmerdill! I will enter the photo! I knew I should have taken pics of it all along! I've been watching it as even as a baby it looked weird, long and straight. It's a Marketmore. Never could understand why we would need seedless cukes! Burpless, yes, seedless, no!

What you say makes sense. After all, these are the "fruits", the seed pods, of the cucumbers.

Here's another baby I found that looks a lot like the cuke in the first post looked like as a baby. Gotta keep an eye on this one. This is also a Marketmore. It might be from the same plant, I will have to follow the vines to see!

Hi bolino,

What do you think of this one? This is my Tasty Jade. Very strange looking...

tmm

OMG!!!! This is definitely a wierder cuke than mine! Looks like it was "trained"!

What kind is it?

There are always multiple mis-shaped cukes around here. I wonder if excessive dry can contribute?

bolino,

well it's just that my cuke is weird in different ways than yours. Yours are pretty funky looking too.

My strange cuke is Tasty Jade. Many of them are weird shaped, kind of like bolino's first photo except that mine doesn't have the mid section narrowing, but the tip part gets inflated like bolino's. (You can tell the tip part inflated on the one in my photo too.)

My Sweet Success has been giving me pretty much uniformly shaped cukes but Tasty Jade has been not so uniform in shape.

Either way, the one in the photo is the only one of Tasty Jade that is ribbed like that so I can't tell you if the dry heat is doing it or not. It sure looks as if I put some strings on the cuke to make those ribs, but this was totally nature's creation.

tmm

Bolino, I had the same thing happen with my japanese cukes.

Yikes!
Kanita, your japanese cuke looks weird too and kind of yellowish.

What kind is it?

tmm

The tag on the cell pack simply said Japanese Cuke.

My cukes did that "barbell" look too this season. They still tasted great!