LEADING VEGETABLE CROPS 1 5$ 



CUCUMBERS 



The cucumber is among the oldest of cultivated 

 plants, there being good evidence that it was of 

 some importance several thousand years before 

 Christ and one of the vegetables grown in the water- 

 heated pits of the early Romans. As an outdoor 

 crop, it is of more importance in the South than in 

 the North. The cucumber ranks third in importance 

 of all vegetables grown under glass. The plant 

 requires hot and moist climatic conditions for 

 its best development and thrives most luxuriantly 

 upon sandy types of soils well supplied with or- 

 ganic matter and available plant food. It is ex- 

 tremely tender to frosts and for this reason is of 

 more importance in the South, where it can be 

 handled and started under field conditions with less 

 difficulty than in the North, In cooler climates the 

 cucumber must be grown as a midsummer crop, or 

 if early fruits are to be secured the seed must be 

 planted in greenhouses or hotbeds usually from the 

 first to the tenth of March and be ready for trans- 

 planting to the field from the middle of May to the 

 first of June. 



The cucumber as a garden crop is cultivated for 

 three distinct purposes, its general cultivation and 

 care being greatly modified in each case. First as 

 a field or outdoor crop for slicing purposes, second, 

 as a forcing crop under glass for slicing purposes, 

 and, third, as a field crop for pickles. Its cultivation 

 in a commercial way under the first head is con- 

 fined almost entirely to the more southern states. 

 Where climatic conditions permit its growth with 

 only slight protection, such as is afforded by cold 

 frames and muslin-covered frames, it is cultivated 

 almost the entire season through. 



