Why are cucumbers bitter?
This spring - already in April - my family tasted cucumbers grown on our windowsill. The plants, huddled in a small box, gave birth to only 4 cucumbers, but surprisingly sweet and fragrant! There was no trace of the bitterness that so often spoils the joy of crunching cucumbers from the garden. And here I began to think, was it really possible for me to create more suitable conditions for cucumbers at home than in the open ground?
Who is guilty? To begin with, you need to keep in mind that what gives cucumbers such an unattractive taste is the substance cucurbitacin - saponin (from the Latin sapo - soap). All plants of the pumpkin family have the ability to produce this substance; by the way, they are called Cucurbitaceae in Latin. With the help of cucurbitacin, plants are protected from eating fruits by animals until the fruits ripen. In ripe fruits, the protective substance is destroyed, since the need for protection disappears; on the contrary, the fruits want to be eaten quickly. But we like young cucumbers, not ripe ones, and here selection came to the rescue, with the help of which many varieties were developed that are not prone to the formation of bitterness. Among them are such varieties as April, Klavdiya, Kupechesky, Mazai, Masha, Othello, Rodnichok, Khrustik, Kurazh and others. And yet, the main reason for the production of cucurbitacin is stress, namely, improper watering, temperature, and nutrition.
What to do? The homeland of the cucumber is the tropics and subtropics of India, where it is warm and damp, and the scorching sun is shaded by evergreen trees.Therefore, in our country it should be grown with light shading of fruit crops. In hot weather and drought, it is very important to water the plants generously with warm water twice a day - early in the morning and in the evening at 17-18 hours. Good results are obtained when using customizable drip irrigation, with which you can easily feed cucumbers. On cool nights, cucumber plants will be effectively protected by white Agrotex covering material, which allows light to pass through and provides ventilation. Grow cucumbers in loose soil, mulching them with peat or loose soil every 7-10 days. By the way, this crop loves acidified soil (pH 5.0-6.0). Cucumber is very picky about the content of nutrients in the soil, but under no circumstances should it be fertilized with fresh manure.
Stress is extreme. For a cucumber, sharp extremes in soil humidity, air and temperature trigger a program to protect its offspring - the production of cucurbitacin - so that the fruits are not eaten and are guaranteed to have time to ripen. Therefore, sometimes, when summer is characterized by changeable weather, cucumbers grow better on glazed balconies than in open ground and do not become bitter. Not only I was able to create optimal conditions for cucumbers on the loggia: a friend approached this matter more thoroughly - he planted the plants in a large box and used the soft fertilizer “Gumi-Omi Cucumber, Zucchini, Melons”. As a result, he brought at least a dozen fresh, fragrant and sweet pimply cucumbers to his table twice a week! This proves that if you approach the matter wisely, the result will not be long in coming.
We now have very hot weather and the temperature in the shade reaches 36 degrees.I water my cucumbers every other day, but some varieties are bitter and some are not. Dutch gherkins are sweet, but the Zozulya variety is bitter. I was told that this is due to insufficient watering.
It turns out that a lot of reasons affect the taste of cucumbers. Vedt didn’t really give a concrete answer to the question of why cucumbers are bitter.
The specific answer is insufficient watering. In addition, cucumbers grow better not in a place open to the sun, but in a little partial shade. You need to create a humid environment and partial shade for them, then the cucumbers will not taste bitter.
A lot also depends on the variety. There are cucumbers in which bitterness is absent at the genetic level. And over the past ten years we have never come across bitter cucumbers, but we plant a lot of them and eat them all summer.
Cucumbers become bitter mainly from insufficient and improper watering. I thoroughly fill my greenhouse with manure, naturally pour earth on top, and from a container that stands nearby in the morning and evening I generously spill the greenhouse with good river water. Well, actually this summer, maybe 1 - 2 bitter cucumbers came across, but there are good ones by the bucketful.
To prevent cucumbers from becoming bitter, it is enough to water them generously every other day, and if the heat is intense in the summer, then every day. Fertilizing them has virtually no effect on bitterness.
a sharp change in conditions is to blame for everything, this year I ate a cucumber grown in an open area and a cucumber grown nearby 10 meters away, but in a greenhouse, of the same variety - greenhouse is not bitter, which proves that with a relatively constant environment and protection from direct sunlight, the cucumber is not bitter.
Cucumbers are quite capricious and finicky plants. I heard that they can become bitter due to insufficient watering. Cucumbers love to be heavily watered with warm water.
My grandmother always told me that cucumbers should not be watered with cold water, otherwise they will become too bitter. Therefore, I water my cucumbers with settled, warm water, water well, abundantly, both in the morning and in the evening. There are almost no bitter ones. Although a lot probably also depends on the variety. I mainly plant varieties “Rodnichok”, “Zozulya”, “Clavdia”.
Cucumbers are heat-loving vegetables and if you water them with cold water, they will grow poorly or even dry out. To avoid bitterness, you need to water regularly, at least every other day, and fertilize properly.
There are many things that affect the bitterness of cucumbers. For example, I noticed that the hotter the sun gets, the more bitter it becomes. But a neighbor - an old grandfather - says that if you step on cucumber plexuses when picking cucumbers, the harvest will not be tasty and bitter, since moisture and nutrients from the ground will not reach the fruits through those places.
Cucumber bitterness is more of a hereditary trait, but often occurs in drought conditions. If the cucumbers have not been watered for a long time or there is simply a drought, you cannot do without bitter fruits.
We grow cucumbers in a greenhouse, water them often, and still we come across some that are bitter.
Maybe you water them often, or maybe you just got a bad variety?
I hope everyone knows that cucumbers, for example in a greenhouse in summer, grow at night if the temperature is above +12 degrees. Therefore, they need to be watered daily at night and then close the greenhouse. With this approach you will never have bitter cucumbers!
If you water at night, there is a risk of freezing them altogether. And even in summer there are light frosts at night, which are invisible to other crops, but can be simply fatal for cucumbers.
If you water at the root, the cucumbers will never freeze in the summer. If in your region there are frosts in the summer, then cucumbers should be covered with film at night and grown in greenhouses.
I once had a harvest of bitter cucumbers. Later, after analyzing everything I did, I realized that this was most likely due to phosphate fertilizers. Previously, I always grew cucumbers without fertilizers, but then I decided to try...I don’t experiment anymore.
In order for the cucumbers in the greenhouse to be sweet, they must be watered often and it is better not to fertilize them with anything nasty.
I have been planting the varieties "Courage" and "German" for many years. There is never a single cucumber with bitterness. Give up varieties such as “bush” (I know that many grandmothers still plant them).
There is an opinion that black-thorned cucumbers are usually bitter, so if you don’t have time for special care, it’s better to choose white-thorned varieties.Recently, we have been planting cucumbers in the garden so that they trail up the stick, this provides additional shade to retain moisture.
Even in early childhood, I was told that cucumbers become bitter if they do not have enough water. But still, apparently, there are more capricious varieties. This summer we watered the cucumbers very often and abundantly. And still, at the end of summer, bitter ones began to appear. I didn’t know about varieties whose genes do not contain bitterness. I need to advise my grandfather. Our great gardener will be happy to solve the problem.
It’s one thing when cucumbers don’t have enough water, but it’s quite another when they are picked late, because at the end of summer, the nights are already cool and they grow more slowly, which is why the cucumbers turn out bitter.