It is not an easy task to grow and care for any plant(without proper knowledge and experience) if you are going to grow them at your home or in gardens in Canada.
How to grow cucumber at home in Canada(2022)?
You are going to get a step-by-step guide from sowing, composting, watering, weeding, harvesting, and proper care of cucumber plants at your home in Canada.
Required conditions to grow cucumber at home in Canada
Soil type and pH
You don't need a special kind of soil to grow cucumber. You can grow them in your garden soil too. You just need to add fix ratio of fertilizers and maintain plenty of moisture in the soil.
The pH of soil may be disturbed but you can use pure organic compost to maintain it between 6.5 to 7.6.
Compost and fertilizers
You can easily make organic compost at your home or in the garden without any problem with minimum available resources.
You just have to use it before sowing seeds and after the plant gets mature and starts to produce yellow flowers.
Temperature and humidity
Not too hot not too cold weather is ideal for cucumber plants anywhere in the world. But in Canada, the best temperature to grow cucumber plants is between 20 degrees Celcius to 30 degrees Celcius. Warm weather conditions are ideal for Cucumber plants.
Early-stage preparations
Soaking of packet seeds
Here comes your first step. You have to soak packet seeds in a pot/utensil for 12 to 24 hours. This soaking activates the sprout desire in seeds.
You can use these seeds right after separation with water.
Size of pots/containers
Suppose you are going to plant 10 cucumber plants at your home. For this, you need a large container first to make the seeds sprout into small plants.
Then you have to transplant them in small pots/containers for better and more comfortable growth. So considering two plants in a pot, you need four pots of 6 inches in diameter and 7 to 8 inches deep. For sprouting, you need a 16 inches container in diameter and 8 to 10 inches deep.
Male holes in the pot walls for air filtration for the roots of plants. For each pot, 15 to 20 holes of a 2 mm radius are good for air filtration.
Soil mixture and fertility
Before sowing cucumber seeds, you need to fix the ratio of soil with compost. You can either take 50:40:10 of garden soil, organic compost, and water respectively, or you can take 50:50 of garden soil and vermicompost respectively. You can later add water before sowing seeds to maintain moisture.
Now fill the pots with this soil mixture a few inches below its height. Keep the soil to cover the seeds after sowing.
#You don't need to wet the soil, you just have to maintain the moisture with 35% to 45%.
Season of growing cucumber
The best time to grow cucumber is moderate temperature and humidity. You can either grow them in spring or autumn.
You can start it from end of the February to mid-March and harvest between end of the April to starting of June.
In autumn, you can start cultivation from the first week of August and harvest in October.
Process to grow cucumber in Canada
Sowing of seeds
Dig small holes in the soil, and sow the soaked cucumber seeds. You can add seeds according to your requirement. After sowing, cover them with a thin layer of soil and spray water drops on it.
First appearance of sprouts
Spray water on the third day from sowing day, and wait for the 5th to 6th day. The sprouts start appearing within 5 to 7 days. Let the sprouts become a small plant of at least 3 to 4 inches, and they are ready to transplant into other pots.
Transplantation of small plants
Before transplantation, you have to fill the other pots with the same soil mixture as mentioned above, just a few inches below their height.
You can use a small cultivator to take out a single plant at a time. Now dig small holes and transplant the small plants in those pots. Cover them with a thin layer of soil mixture and spray water. You can let the few plants grow in the big container.
Spray regular water in the plants to check the maintain the moisture between 25 to 35%. Don't spray water if the soil is already moist, and don't let the soil dry either.
Direct sunlight for cucumber plants
Plant make their food in the sunlight. At moderate temperature, you can provide direct sunlight to the plants for the whole day.
In the case of cucumbers, 6 to 7 hours of direct sunlight provide accelerated growth to the plants.
Climbing support frame for veins
once small cucumber plants establish their roots in the soil, their growth speed increases quickly but takes some time to produce a cucumber.
To avoid bushy growth, you need a platform to let them get in a particular direction.
Use bamboo cuttings and pillars. Set them in the soil and bound the plant with the bamboo. Apply this to each pot of cucumber.
Weeding of spontaneous plants
Consistent moisture is helpful for cucumber plants but it can let the chance to grow spontaneous plants. From 30th to 50th day, spontaneous plants get the best growing conditions.
Keep weeding and cleaning the spontaneous plants from the pots from time to time.
Composting when yellow flowers appear
On the first appearance of yellow buds, you have to use organic fertilizers or vermicompost to provide essential elements during the rest of the growth. You have to repeat the process every 10 to 12 days after this. When the final cucumber starts to get the shape, you need one last composting in the pot.
How long does cucumber take to grow?
It depends on the variety. But the average time to grow cucumber on the plant veins is 50 to 75 days.
This is the period when they become mature but cucumbers consistently grow till 90 to 100 days.
Harvesting of the cucumber plant in pots
Cucumber harvesting depends on the variety of cucumbers. Mostly, cucumber harvest in the morning period of all varieties. Morning harvested cucumber remains solid and moist for a longer period.