By: Kathleen Mierzejewski
Every garden should have cucumbers. They grow easily and usually don’t give anyone any trouble. They simply require fertilization, good soil, water, sunshine and lots of space to vine out. So long as you provide these things you would think you would have a good crop of cucumbers, right?
However, once in a while, you end up with misshaped cucumbers. Have you ever wondered what could be causing this to happen to the fruit? Deformed cucumbers can happen for a number of reasons.
Reasons for a deformed cucumber
If your cucumber is funny shaped, you might have a problem with pollination. If there is a lack of insects in your garden area because you have been so diligent in removing or destroying them, you might find that there is nothing to pollinate your cucumbers. These plants require honeybees for pollination and if there is a lack of bees in your area, you will have difficulties. This leads to misshaped cucumbers every time. Pollination has obviously occurred because there are fruits, but if you have low insect activity, then not enough pollination has occurred causing deformed fruits.
Sometimes too hot of temperatures can actually kill the pollen keeping pollinators away. If this happens, again you will have deformed cucumbers.
Sometimes your deformed cucumbers could be caused by moisture stress.
Fertilization is needed in every garden. However, if your cucumber is funny shaped, you might need to back off your fertilization. Sometimes too much fertilization can cause deformed cucumbers. You can back off the fertilization because as they mature, they require less anyhow. As they mature, they can self-sustain. This means you don’t have to do anything but watch them mature.
If your problem is discolored cucumbers, meaning they are yellow instead of green, your issue could be because you planted yellow fleshed cucumbers. There is such a thing, and it happens that sometimes you could have planted them by accident. Check your packaging. Otherwise, this could also be a virus. You might want to pick the yellow ones to encourage more fruit to produce, and see if those also come in yellow. If they do, you probably planted yellow ones, and you probably don’t have anything to worry about.
Finally, if you are wondering why your cucumber is funny shaped, it could be that there was low fertility. In these cases, deformed cucumbers can be prevented by side-dressing with a good fertilizer. This will help later cucumbers form more normally than your early ones.
