My bitter-less cucumbers are bitter:-(

I finally got to sample my telegraph cucumber. Bitter all the way through:-( I was gone for a few days and had to rely on a neighbor. Pretty dry when I got home. Do you think these plants will only produce bitter cucumbers. Or might it be that just the ones under development at the time will be bitter? I'm so bummed, I finally got my greenhouse so I can grow cucumbers, and YUCK!

I've grown Telegraph for a couple years now and bitterness is not one of their traits.

Hot, dry weather will increase the level of cucurbitacin in cucumbers, which is what causes that bitterness. I don't know what your temps are where you are but if you are growing them in a greenhouse I imagine it gets mighty hot in there. (My greenhouse, with shade cloth and two huge exhaust fans easily reaches 100º on a typical 85º day here.)

I hope, now that you are home again, you can water your plants when they need it and continue to get more cukes so you can really get a good sample of Telegraph.

Shoe

Hey shoe,

I don't think my GH has gotten over 90 this summer. I have exhaust fans, shade cloth, and swap cooler. Where I live a GH is the only way to grow cucumber. I did try growing them in earthboxes, which can go dry in a day. I thought i was being careful, but must of stressed them. I will see how the new ones turn out.

thanks

90 is a bit warm/hot for cukes, too. Sure hope you end up with some good tasting ones at some point though. (And yes, the Earth Boxes sure do drink up the water; others I know now use the auto-water system the EB people now offer.)

Just curious, do ya'll need the g-house due to high altitude and cooler nights out there? Or is it due to such a short season and you need to get them going early? (Never been to Colorado, can't ya tell!? Hopefully one day though!)

Shoe

Ok, so I googled cucurbitacin because I didn't know what it was. The results were a bunch of scientific literature, one concerning a treatment for cancer and another that looks like it might be an organic pesticide? Pretty cool - wish it was written in layman's terms. Maybe there are some scientists out there who would like to have your nasty ;o) cucumbers.

Hah! Too funny, Indy! (Well, only from my perspective, I reckon!)

Cucurbitacin is the chemical ingredient in cucurbits (melons, cucumbers, etc) that give them a bit of bitterness. From Wikipedia:
"Toxic tetracyclic triterpenes found in plants of the family Cucurbitaceae, e.g. squash, pumpkin, cucumber, melons. Called also ‘bitter principle of the cucurbits’."

I haven't heard of it being associated with disease and such but, hmmm...now wouldn't it be great if we ate the bitter cukes and it helped stave off cancer?

Shoe

Do you think that scientist experience the opposite but equal gardening frustrations that we do?

Scientist: All I'm trying to do is harvest produce with excessive levels of cucurbitacin so that I can research its effect on tumors. But for the life of me, I can't get these cukes to turn bitter! I've eaten 6.04 times my weight in salad and cucumber sandwiches, but I can't even start my project on a selective Janus Kinase/Signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 signaling pathway inhibitor with potent antitumor activity against human and murine cancer cells in mice!

:o)

Uh, indy_v? Is that what you consider laymans terms? ;>}

indy - stop it please - you are killing me, and I do not need to be closer to "dead" than I allready am. Heck, stuff just stops working after awhile, even without help from scientific type minds. - Dyson

Indy, too funny! That's a classic write-up! Has me actually feeling sorry for that po' po' scientist! We better volunteer some of fourks cukes to research.

Hilarious!

Shoe

You guys are to funny! yeah, thats what I'll tell everyone. I'm a scientist doing cancer research!

Maybe I'll just start eating those bitter cute's. I'm at the age that every little ache and pain must be some sort of cancer:-)