88 



GREENHOUSE CUCUMBERS 



Mr. Bonney: At this period Mr. Zuck will talk to us on 

 the growing of greenhouse cucumbers. He is a man of prac- 

 tical experience, and we are going to get some good ideas. 



GREENHOUSE CUCUMBERS. 

 F. J. Zuck, Erie, Pennsylvania. 



I was talking with Professor Carpenter of the engineering 

 department yesterday. I wanted to get some pointers on 

 heating with hot water as compared with heating with steam. 

 He says there is just about as much difference as when a 

 fellow picks out a girl — one takes one and one another, and 

 each one has the best. And he went on to give me a few of 

 the merits of each method. 



I believe that is pretty much the way with many of our 

 operations. I have my way, and I think it is the best. Some- 

 one else has his way, and he thinks that the best. Each way 

 is the best in the locality in which each labors. 



The cucumber plant owes the greenhouse man a great debt. 

 It is by nature a vining plant and must crawl humbly over 

 the ground. He, however, has raised its station in life by 

 making it to grow erect and proudly. He also has brought it 

 to the front as an early spring vegetable second to none. 



The cucumber plant is monoecious — each plant has separate 

 staminate and pistillate flowers. In the case of asparagus the 

 pistillate flowers are on one plant and the staminate on the 

 other plant. In the tomato the flower is perfect. The stam- 

 inate parts and the pistillate parts are all in one flower. The 

 joint of the stem is, so to speak, the unit and has four mem- 

 bers, the leaf, the lateral, the tendril and the flower. The de- 

 termination of the sex of a flower seems to be with the axil 

 or joint, because two opposite flowers never come from the 

 same axil. The English forcing type of cucumber very sel- 

 dom has many more than one or two flowers from an axil, 

 but in the White Spine type I have counted as many as fl^fteen 

 flowers from one axil, and they are always either the male or 

 the female. Bees, both inside and outside, are the agency of 

 fertilizing the blossoms. 



