How to String Train Cucumbers for less disease and easier harvesting.

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That's right. Just like tomatoes, I grow my cucumbers on strings. Get ready for tips on growing cucumbers under cover, keeping them healthy and sticking it to the murderous cucumber beetle.

One of the reasons I like my community garden so much is that it's a perfect mix of complete and partial weirdos. I say that with all the respect as someone who is a borderline total weirdo. For the most part our weirdness is manifested in our desire to grow our own food no matter what the cost.

If I have to turn 14 pool noodles into a giant spider costume that I wear for 4 hours a day to scare away the raccoons just give me a glue gun and get out of my way.

For years I've been string training my tomatoes the same way commercial greenhouse growers do. It was love at first blight.

With the string method, disease like blight and wilt are less likely to take hold and kill a plant because the tomato plants are kept smaller, away from the soil and with a lot of air circulation between them.

These same benefits apply to cucumbers as well.

Table of Contents

Growing Cucumbers Vertically on String

The best time to string train your cucumbers is when you first plant them, but even if they're sprawling on the ground right now you can string them up.

The method is exactly the same as string training tomatoes which you can learn about here.

String training cucumbers is done exactly the same way it is with tomatoes. Just hang a line of string from something towards the ground and as the cucumber plant grows, wind it firmly around the string. They support each other. Like a hotdog and mustard.

Pinch the suckers

The one thing you should do that you might not know about is trim the suckers. Yes. Cucumbers have suckers just like tomatoes do, only they're harder to see because cucumbers are notoriously sneaky.

If you've ever pulled out a cucumber plant at the end of the season only to find a cucumber the size of clown car hidden in the leaves, you know all about this sneakiness first hand.

You probably think that cucumbers are supposed to have a billion vines sprawling all over the place but they're way easier to manage when you keep the plant to one or two main leaders, just like you do with tomatoes. Pinch out any suckers.

(Suckers are stems that grow from between a leaf node and the main stem)

Learn how to identify a sucker here.

By the end of the season cucumber plants will still be sad looking, but this method of growing up a string helps slow down bacterial wilt that's transferred from cucumber beetles to the plants.

Bacterial Wilt & Cucumber Beetles

These small striped bugs chew away on cucumber plants but the real issue is that they carry disease that almost inevitably leads to cucumber wilt.

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If you've ever had your cucumber vines suddenly start to turn brown and die over a period of just a few days - that's cucumber wilt.

Maybe because we are having such unusually warm winters, maybe because pests come in cycles, maybe because the world is out to get me. Who knows.

String training can't eliminate cucumber wilt but it can help temper it. Growing disease resistant varieties of cucumbers will also help. I have a list of disease resistant plants I grow in this post.

Parthenocarpic cucumbers

The BEST way to eliminate bacterial wilt on cucumbers is to grow parthenocarpic varieties. They do not need pollination from insects. Parthenocarpic varieties don't need pollen to be transferred from flower to flower for the plant to set fruit.

This means you can grow them under a mesh cover to keep cucumber beetles out without worrying the plants won't get pollinated.

Strip the Leaves

The other key to string training is to remove the lower, unhealthy leaves. This is good practice for tomatoes and vertically grown zucchini as well.

When the cucumber vine makes it up to the top of the string, just start guiding it down the string on the other side.

These are pickling cucumbers by the way, in case you were thinking that string training stunts the growth of cucumbers. It doesn't.

For my pickling cucumbers I grow Eureka Hybrid cucumbers because of their disease resistance. I may switch to a self pollinating variety if the cucumber beetle situation in Southern Ontario doesn't improve.

To make up for plant deaths I grow twice as many cucumber plants as I think I'll need and I make sure no plants are touching their neighbouring cucumber plant.

Cucumber Tips

Pinch out suckers to make vines more manageable and cucumbers easier to see.
Pickling cucumbers are a great choice if you never seem to eat your way through a regular cucumber before it goes bad. They're crunchier and drier than a regular cucumber though.
Grow parthenocarpic varieties under cover to keep beetles & death away.
If you notice a plant with bacterial wilt (it will look wilted, unhealthy and have brown leaves forming) PULL IT. Get rid of it immediately to slow the spread to your other plants.
If you're a picklehead, always grow twice as many plants as you think you need because they won't all ripen at the same time. It's hard to make pickles if you're only able to pick 2 or 3 cucumbers a day. Also, some of those plants are bound to get cucumber wilt so planting more improves your chances of getting enough cucumbers before the whole plot shrivels up and dies.

Here's my favourite Bread & Butter Pickles recipe.

And here's my Favourite Kosher Dill recipe.

I truly believe you could be successful at growing just about anything with the string method.