With well over 100 different varieties of cucumbers around the world, there are plenty of choices for the home gardener to choose from.

Cucumbers are often pickled or eaten fresh, and the varieties offered today cater to these practices in the kitchen, with cucumbers that were bred to do well in pickling, have good taste and texture for fresh eating, and now even burpless varieties (less bitter) being available.

Here I go into an easy way to help you choose the cucumber seeds you will want to grow in your garden, so you don’t get overwhelmed when purchasing seeds this year.

Let’s Dive In..

Growing Cucumbers at Home | Choosing Heirloom Cucumber Seeds

Quick side note, a seed name can become heirloom after the plant has been around for 50 years that has been exposed to open pollination (in contrast today’s hybrid seeds can be younger and must be pollinated by human hand to recreate the plant). After 50 years (some seeds have been around for hundreds of years, mind you) these heirloom seeds end up showing resiliency in terms of consistent seed saving, consistent disease resistance, and consistent taste, texture. Heirloom seeds are always non- GMO. I highly suggest heirloom seeds in your home gardens!

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The first thing with picking cucumbers to grow is how you want to eat them: pickled or fresh?

From the answer to this question, you will be able to navigate seed companies easily to find what you are looking for, because seed companies usually divide them into simple categories.

Cucumbers are generally divided into these three categories:

Pickling cucumbers
Slicers
Burpless

Pickling

Aimed to stay crisp and keep their shape, pickling varieties are made to perform well during pickling processes, both fermenting or canning. Most pickling varieties grow shorter and straighter when compared to slicers, and usually have more bumps on them. These bumps help protect them from pests and dehydration (which is needed for smaller cucumbers). Their flavors are often more pronounced compared to slicers, also.

Slicers

Meant for fresh eating. Slicers often are larger than pickling cucumbers. There shapes make slicing easier. Many also have thin and smoother skins that are palatable to eat fresh. There is a wide range of flavor in slicers from bitter, sweet, and citrusy. Slicer’s flavors are often milder compared to pickling cucumbers.

Burpless

Some cucumbers are prized for being the best ‘burpless’ variety, and burpless have become highly sought after, so it deems its own category. Burpless cucumbers are specifically bred to contain lower levels of a compound that is responsible for bitter tastes called cucurbitacin. They can be heirloom or current hybrid varieties. Think of burpless as a marketing term towards flavor. A burpless cucumber can be either a pickling or a slicer, so make sure to double check to make sure it’s a cucumber you wish to use.

Choosing a Cucumber Seed Packet to Purchase

Once you narrowed down what you are interested in, many seed companies will divide their cucumber seeds accordingly so you can easily navigate through the final step, which is purchasing.

At this point (no matter if you are looking under pickling or slicer cucumbers) you will see names like Dragon’s Egg, Lemon, Paris Pickling, Longfellow, Mexican Sour Gherkin, Straight Eight, Boston Pickling, etc., etc…

Each variety will have a unique flavor profile from bitter, sweet, citrusy, crunchy, etc. Some are even different colors such as yellow and white.

Reading variety descriptions will help you decide on what to choose.

After leafing through all of this, you should have the exact cucumber you want to grow, and you can purchase!

Growing Tips:

All cucumbers grow the same way: long, prickly vines similar to squashes.

They will need trellising to save on space and make harvesting easier, however, it’s possible to allow them to grow on the ground and sprawl with little problems.

Some are available that are suitable for large pots, but that will be mentioned specifically in the seed packet description.

Cucumbers do very well with direct sowing (planting the seed straight to the ground) rather than seed starting indoors.

Cucumbers need full sun, fertile soil, lots of water.

That’s It!

Cucumbers are a great vegetable to grow right at home, and they can sure blow any of the storebought cucumbers out of the water (like most homegrown vegetables do, but homegrown cucumbers are particularly flavorful compared to the storebought ones).

I love to grow Wisconsin SMR 58 for both pickling and fresh eating, and it’s earned a permanent spot in the garden roster, but I always experiment at least one new one each year.

I will add pickling cucumbers are great fresh eating, but slicers do poorly in canning.

Enjoy!

-Chelsea, The Cottage Vegetable