Want to grow abundant container cucumbers?
If you are on the hunt for container cucumbers, there are several great varieties to grow. But, choosing the right variety for your potted garden isn’t the only key to an abundant harvest of cukes. So we’ll get into some tips for growing a great cucumber container garden as well as listing some reliable container cucumbers you might want to try.
Consider this cuke for your container garden:
Spacemaster 80. The name of this container cucumber says a lot. It’s a funny name right? It kinda sounds like the spaceship of cucumbers, right? But, the word “space” tells us a lot about this one! It needs little space at all to grow abundant, tasty fruits. This cucumber is described as a plant that produces bitter-free, prolific fruits on determinant plants in 58 days even when planted in containers or in small spaces.
And in our experience, it does just that. These container cucumbers will produce for several weeks despite being determinants. Because they’re determinants, they don’t grow vines all season. So, they’re kind of one & done.
It produces crisp, fast-forming, sweet, thin-skinned snacking cukes. The cucumbers look like pickling cukes, but they’re delicious slicers!
But, this cucumber for containers variety does have some downfalls. For instance, powdery mildew hits them fast and hard.
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Bush Slicer is another great container cucumber.
Bush slicer is definitely a great cucumber to grow in a pot. In our experience, it’s got much better disease resistance than SpaceMaster80. Plus, it will produce an abundance of tasty salad cucumbers even in a relatively small container. Better yet, it’s pretty easy to come by their seeds.
In fact, you can pick up Bush Slicer container cucumber seeds via our Renee’s Garden Seeds Affiliate link now.
How big should my container be?
Cucumbers love big root space. So they’ll fill up a small pot with roots fast. Even cucumbers for containers appreciate lots of root space. So, in our experience, planting your container cucumbers in the biggest pot you can is ideal.
But, at a minimum, we’ve had success with these varieties in containers as small as a 2-3 gallon pot. This is especially true for determinant varieties. That’s because they grow and produce in a shorter season than indeterminate varieties.
More space saving container cucumbers to consider:
Even a traditional garden cucumber like Marketmore can do pretty well in pots. Marketmore is an old reliable that tends to be fairly disease resistant. And, they’re indeterminate, so they produce for a long time.
SpaceMaster is sweeter than Marketmore, and the cukes are so pretty. They look like perfect little slightly striped dill pickles.
I love reading your blog and always get such useful tips and inspiration from it. This year was the first time I ever successfully grew cucumbers in Seattle – I don’t know what they’re called, they were starts from the Orca plant sale, but they are the most abundantly producing pickling cukes I’ve ever seen. I do have a question about powdery mildew, we always get it on our squash and cukes but the plants still seem to produce just fine. Is it just that we’re getting a reduced crop than if we didn’t have it or if we more actively combatted it? Thanks!
Thanks so much for reading & writing in! Congrats on the cukes, too.
Plants can survive and continue to produce for a while once they have powdery mildew, but you’re right — it does really stress the plants and can reduce yield. And, it can spread from one plant to an entire crop very rapidly. It certainly isn’t pretty, and it will eventually kill the crop. Depending on when it hits, you can get some fruits or no fruits at all. Best to try to keep on top of it & catch it as soon as it starts…speaking of, I’ve got a bunch of leaves I need to go cut out of my cukes and my butternuts this morning. Bah!
What size (diameter & depth) of a container can I grow the Spacemaster in? Thanks
We’ve grown them in as small as a 1 gallon container & got a few fruits from those plants before they pooped out for the season. The ones we grew in 2/3 gallon pots performed much better & longer. The dimensions of these size pots can vary. Some are deeper than wider & visa versa. Good luck!
When putting space master cucumbers in containers. What size container do you need for one plant?
Alison, thanks for writing in. In our experience, they will grow in a 2-3 gallon pot. Larger will make them happier and productive longer. But, smaller than that size isn’t likely to prove very fruitful. Good luck!