Key Points
- Pruning cucumber vines boosts airflow and limits disease and pest issues, especially when growing multiple plants together.
- Removing suckers early and consistently focuses the plant’s energy on producing better-quality fruit rather than excessive foliage.
- Pruning isn’t essential for every grower, but it’s especially helpful if you want healthier plants and manageable growth in small garden spaces.
Cucumbers grow on vines and, like most vines, they grow rapidly and prolifically. When several plants are grown together vines can quickly become tangled, overgrown, and difficult to maintain.
Trellising your cucumber crop and pruning each plant to just one or two vines directs energy into producing fruit rather than making more vines.
Should You Prune Cucumber Plants?
Pruning cucumber vines is a personal choice. If you only grow one cucumber plant, pruning probably isn’t necessary. However, reducing the number of vines on multiple plants improves the vigor of each plant.
Fewer vines mean better air circulation, and that translates to less opportunity for fungal diseases like powdery mildew and bacterial wilt. Overcrowded vines also provide plenty of hiding places for insect pests like cucumber beetles, which carry disease and damage foliage and fruits.
Reducing the number of vines can reduce the number of fruits, but will greatly improve quality. Since cucumbers are generally prolific, your harvest will most likely be plentiful whether or not you decide to prune.
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How to Prune Cucumber Plants
Pruning cucumber vines is much like pruning tomatoes. At the junction where each leaf meets a primary vine, there is also a flower that eventually becomes a fruit, a tendril that attaches to a support structure, and a new growth point, commonly called a sucker. Suckers grow into secondary vines which produce more suckers that become tertiary vines and so on. Follow these steps to prune your cucumber vines:
- Locate the point where a large leaf meets a primary vine. These large leaves are called “sun leaves.” They help protect the fruits against sunscald and are the primary foliage needed for photosynthesis.
- Identify the new growth point. You want to leave the sun leaf, flower or fruit, and tendril at each juncture along the primary vine but prune out the sucker.
- Pinch out the sucker with your thumb and index finger when it’s under 2 inches long. A hand pruner will take care of longer suckers with thicker stems.
Each plant can be pruned to the number of primary vines of your choice. A trellised two-vine system produces good results.
When to Prune Cucumber Plants
To work with one or two primary vines, start pruning your cucumber vines early in the season. A week or two after plants have established, they start to send out sun leaves and tendrils. As soon as you see new leaves start checking for suckers at the juncture of the sun leaf and primary vine.
You’ll need to continue to pinch out suckers throughout the cucumber growing season which runs through June and into mid-July depending on your growing zone.
Don’t panic if you miss a few days. Just start from the top of your vine and work your way down, removing suckers as you go.
Tips For Cucumber Plant Pruning
- Whether you grow one plant or several, pinching out the earliest flowers helps get your vines off to a good start. Only pinch the first few flowers that appear early in the season and remember that every flower can potentially become a fruit.
- If you want to establish a two- or three-vine system for your plant, start pruning early. For a two-vine system, allow the first sucker that appears on the primary vine to grow. For a three-vine system, let the first two suckers on your primary vine continue to grow. Keep in mind you will then need to remove suckers from two or three primary vines for the remainder of the growing season.
- Growing your cucumber vines on a fence, trellis, or other structure gives you easy access for pruning and maintenance.
FAQ
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Pruning may not give you greater numbers but it will give you more good quality fruit. You’re less likely to throw out cucumbers that are overly large, bitter or misshapen.
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You can remove the very first few flowers that appear to help vines get off to a good start. If you prune plants to one or two main vines, removing additional flowers will reduce your harvest.
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Once you’ve established as many primary vines as you want for each plant, you need to remove side shoots (suckers) from each of those vines continuously throughout the growing season.
