mksmth, I noticed that one or two of the cukes I last picked had bitter skins. I'm wondering if it might be the heat stressing them. Have you seen the videos or read the articles that swear if you cut off a piece of the blossom end and rub it in a circular pattern over the cut area of the cucumber, until a foam appears, you will release the majority of the bitterness? I've not tried it, but it is interesting. That would be a chore if all the cukes were bitter, though.

Oh, mksmth, I forgot to mention that I noticed the bitter cukes AFTER I'd put them up as refrigerator pickles. I put 5 jars up one evening and was getting ready a couple days later to hand one off to my oldest daughter as she headed to work (She rarely eats a decent meal, but she'll snack on gummy bears and my salsa/pickled stuff). Before I let her leave with that jar, I opened another jar, and took a "taste test". I bit into a bitter one. I sampled another, and it wasn't bitter. I had cut all my cucumbers up and didn't bother to taste any before I jarred them in the brine: Bad Mistake. I will not do that again. I will sacrifice the end of each cucumber for a "taste test" for the rest of the season. It made me feel bad and it embarrassed me, because the others in the ER sample/eat my stuff, too.

Mary

As with many other vegetable issues we have at this time of the year, stress is the cause of bitter cucumbers to a large extent, and it largely happens when the cucurbitacin compounds in the plants go into the cucumbers. I have a theory about why this happens.....

The type of stress that causes this usually is moisture stress, but also can result from high temperatures, low soil pH, uneven moisture levels and low-fertility soil.

Some varieties are more prone to bitterness than others, and some of the newer varieties have been bred with the bi gene which causes the entire plant to be bitter-free.

Once your plants begin producing bitter cucumbers, you may or may not be able to get them to produce non-bitter cucumbers, but it is worth a try if your plants are still healthy and are producing well. To try to restore your cukes to a non-bitter quality: keep soil evenly moist several inches below grade level and be sure to water deeply less often instead of watering shallowly more often; mulch to maintain even soil moisture that doesn't switch back and forth from being very dry to very wet; feed the plants with a balanced fertilizer; and, if they are in full sun, you may be able to reduce their bitterness by using a 40-50% shade cloth over them. Also keep them well weeded because any stress can result in bitterness.

Some varieties are more bitter than others, so it helps if you grow one of the varieties that generally is not bitter. This is a list of some of the varieties that are less bitter or that do not often produce bitter cukes: County Fair, Lemon, Diva, Sweet Success, Sweet Slice, Suyo Long, Muncher, Marketmore 97, Ashley, Eversweet and Carmen.

I grow County Fair every year, though I usually grow another 2 or 3 varieties in addition to it. I've never gotten bitter cucumbers from it, and it often produces all the way through August for me (and occasionally into autumn) with no bitterness.

I'm still getting cukes, still pickling and still not getting bitter cucumbers, knock on wood. I have been trying to pay careful attention to keeping their soil moist and I also fed them once a couple of weeks ago when I noticed that the foliage color seemed paler than normal and that production had slowed down.

Thanks Mary. I did try that with one today and it seemed to be less bitter on that end. I guess we will see how mine taste soon. Thanks for the advice.

Dawn. Good info as usual. I will probably remove these plants and give the watermelons nearby a little more room. If you remember I had that screw up so I actually have some young cukes that havent started producing yet. Same variety but maybe I can focus on the watering and nutrients better and see if the helps.

mike

Good luck with it. And, I forgot to tell y'all my theory. The curcubitacin normally exists in the plants more so than the fruits. It is bitter to discourage pests from chewing on the plants. When the plants get stressed, though, the curcubitacin B and curcubitacin C flow from the plants into the fruit. I think this is a deliberate attempt by the plants to make the fruit taste bad so no one or nothing will eat the fruit and swallow the seeds. A stressed plant needs to produce viable seed that will carry on the species if the stressed plant were to die, so by preventing the fruit from being eaten, the chances of viable seed maturing go up.

It wasn't a screw-up. It was, um, just life happening. Or some other four-letter word happening.

Dawn, I want to write a response.

Right now, I'm texting my youngest daughter (an adventurer) who is now, as a part of her 2 week excursion/vacation with her 5 year old, at a ranch in Idaho owned by a former owner of the Oakland Raiders! He is taking my 5 year old grandson on a tour in his "gator". This evening, they are in Swan Valley, Idaho.

She is 25, never married, double majored in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, single mother....raised by a disabled single mother. I pushed, shoved, cajoled, nagged, laid the whole guilt trip...she DID IT.

Hey, brag all you want, sounds like you deserve to.

Thanks, Amy.

Brag away, Mary! You're a proud mom and have every right to be. You raised a fine little sprout who's grown to be a strong, accomplished young adult. I hope they have a simply amazing trip and enjoy every minute. For a 5 year old what could be better than riding on that Gator?

Do you know what you did? It was what a friend of mine calls W.I.T.--Whatever It Takes. You did that. You did whatever it took to raise her right and everyone can see what an achiever she turned out to be. That's just awesome.

Outstanding! That double major is impressive. I've had the honor of working with serious architects and engineers while a draftsperson. My father was an architect. Drafting boards, tools, renderings and Autocad are just second nature.

I really thought nothing of these men and women's accomplishments with whom I worked until I attended the college of Architecture at OSU where one of them had graduated as a double major in architecture and engineering. Little did I know that having worked with the fella made me quite popular with the professors. I have much respect. I couldn't pull it. I have the gift like my father, but not the math. That Calculus thing.... I'm not a natural and OSU has fast and furious math classes. That was only architecture!

I'm very proud of your daughter and you have every right to be proud of her. I think gardeners are wise people, so I'm not surprised your daughter turned out well.

Yay Mary's daughter!

bon

Thank you for this post. As a result I am going to go start some nice cool mulched beds and start some more cukes under some type of shade cloth. I really want some cucumbers this year!

Well the second planting of cukes is just as terrible as the first. yanking them out this weekend. No clue whats going on. Hope its just the variety because I have had good cukes in the past in this garden. best news is the couple quarts of pickles I made from the first harvest turned out really good so not all was lost.

Now I get to think about what to plant next!

Why yank them out? Why not nurse them through the next month of hot weather. I expect that as soon as milder weather returns, they will produce cukes with better flavor. Bitterness of cucumber fruit is a temporary situation that usually self-corrects as the weather improves.

I do not understand bitter cucumbers. I don't know if my taste buds are getting so old that they do not perceive bitterness as they once did, or what, but I just don't get bitter cucumbers. I never really have. I even left some of the last ones of the season on the plants to get really, really big this year so I could make cinnamon pickles with them, and tasted some just to see if being overmature and ripening in extreme heat made them bitter and it didn't. I only grow County Fair most years and perhaps it is just that County Fair doesn't turn bitter. I know that Marketmore 80 has a gene that prevents the flavor from turning bitter, but I've never read anywhere that County Fair has the same gene.

I guess I could leave them. they arent in the way other than the cukes and cantaloupe are starting to fight for space. the cantaloupe tastes better. I dont know ill think about it for a day or 2.

My cukes are bitter, too. I have to cut off about a 1/3 on each end, and only use the middle part, because for whatever reason, the middle isn't bitter. I made bread and butter pickles, mixed with jalapenos yesterday. I needed the volume, and I like hot stuff. I grew national pickling, and boston pickling. I've got 15 new plants that are climbing good, and another 15 under the lights that I'll set out in 2 or 3 weeks. I'm staggering them this year, hoping that the cooler weather gives them better taste.

Mary

Out of 6 cucumbers I picked yesterday, I got one pint of pickles. One. Pint. That's how bitter they are, and I'm watering them every other day. It is so aggravating.

The cooler temperatures should give them better flavor. If yours are well-watered and still bitter, it likely is being caused by heat stress, and there's nothing any of us can do about that.

Also, because the gene that produces cucurbitacin (a bitter compound found in the leaves and foliage, but then it moves into the fruit in stressful conditions) is a recessive gene, you're sometimes going to have plants that produce bitter cucumbers regardless of the conditions. I don't know what the odds are that any given plant will be genetically more prone to bitterness, but when you grow the plants from seed, a certain percentage of the seeds will produce plants with the bitter gene, so those are likely to produce bitter fruit no matter what, even if another plant, grown from seed in the same seed packet, doesn't turn bitter as quickly or at all.

There are slicing cucumbers (they often have the word Sweet in their name, like Sweet Slice or Sweet Success) bred to exclude the bitter gene, but I don't think I've heard of any of that breeding being done for pickling cukes.

Dawn, I'm going to try County Fair for some of them next year, and see if that makes a difference.

Mary, If you want to try some County Fair cukes for fall, send me your snailmail address via Houzz and I'll mail you some seeds.

Dawn

Well, I just discovered something: The cukes on the NEW plants are not bitter. Just the cukes on the old plants. They are all on the same trellis, growing under the same conditions, and are from the same seed. Hmmmm.

This likely occurred because the older cuke plants experienced drought stress at some point. They only have to get too dry one time and then the bitterness becomes an issue. As long as the new cukes don't get too dry, they shouldn't develop the bitterness. The bitterness is present in the plant leaves and foliage all along, but when the plant becomes drought-stressed, the bitterness moves into the cucumbers as well. Without the drought stress, the bitterness usually stays in the plants where it belongs (the bitterness of the leaves keeps most pests from feeding on the foliage). I'm glad the new ones aren't bitter. Now you can go wild making pickles again!

Dawn, should I just tear those old vines out? Or cut them at the base?

Well, I doubt I could tear the old vines out, because the new vines have grown all into them. I could probably just cut the plants at the base of the trellis, though. Next year I'll do this a little differently. I should have planted more plants at one time, to ensure that I had enough cucumbers at once to make sufficient batches. Also, the soaker hose should have gone down long before I put it down. I was lulled by all the spring rain, and put it off. I'm sure they did at one time get thirsty, and they just were not going to return to a non-bitter state.