Gardening & Bitter Cucumbers

Bitter Skins

• A cucumber's bitterness is located entirely in and around its skin. The inner flesh remains mild and crisp. Even if your garden produces a bitter batch, you can at least partially cure the problem by skinning the cucumber before serving it. Determining which cucumbers are bitter and which are mild can be challenging, though. A single plant can produce fruit covering the full spectrum, so each cucumber must be individually checked. As a rule of thumb, those cucumbers closest to the stem tend to also have the most bitter skins.

Myths

• As frustrating as it might be, there's very little a gardener can do to prevent bitter cucumbers. Despite speculation to the contrary, fertilization techniques and plant spacing have no consistent bearing on bitterness. Similarly, irrigation has little impact, though if you fail to water them adequately, the fruit is more likely to become stunted and have a bitter flavor. Even with careful and consistent watering, however, cucumbers will sometimes grow bitter, especially during cool growing seasons.

Cool Weather

• Researches have noticed a strong correlation between cool growing seasons and bitter harvests. Although you have no control over the weather, you can decrease the impact of the cold on your cucumbers by planting them in an ideal environment. Find a plot with ample, day-long sunshine. Placing them on the south side of a hill is especially effective, though if you don't have a hill to use, a patch of garden without shade will suffice. This is especially important in the American Northwest, were cool temperatures have a clear history of affecting cucumber growth.

Mulching and Irrigation

• If you're growing bitter cucumbers in a warm environment, its possibly due to drought. Inadequate watering can lead to stunted and bitter fruit. Combating this is a two-step process. First, lay an inch of mulch around the base of your cucumber plant. This will provide insulation from the heat while at the same time keeping the moisture trapped in the soil. Next, water the cucumber plant daily, preferably early in the morning. Provide an inch and a half of water during each session. This is especially important once the cucumber plant begins to fruit.