Growing cucumbers on the balcony: varieties, soil selection, step by step for beginners

Have you decided to grow balcony cucumbers, but don’t know where to start? Remember two basic rules. This culture, like all plants, loves the sun. There is no need to plant them on the north or shaded side. The second point is that the balcony, veranda, loggia must be glazed. Cucumbers do not tolerate drafts.

If two of these factors are present in the apartment, then this is already a guarantee that with planting done in accordance with the rules and the required care, you can get crispy and tasty cucumbers. Growing them indoors is a fun activity. In the absence of a summer cottage, you can arrange a vegetable garden on a window or balcony and harvest it both in summer and in winter.

Balcony cucumbers - is it possible?

cucumbers on the balcony photo
Let's start with the fact that you can't grow cucumbers on just any balcony:

they do not like drafts, so cucumbers indoors should be protected from the wind, and it should be warm enough. One possible solution is a glazed balcony;
For good fruiting you need a lot of light. The optimal orientation of the balcony is considered to be east, south or southeast.

For reference!

If you decide to start growing cucumbers on the balcony, you need to carefully consider how to control the microclimate in the room, otherwise the first night frosts will destroy all the cucumber seedlings.

If there are frequent sharp temperature fluctuations, additional heating will be needed, and in poor lighting conditions, an artificial light source will be needed. It will extend daylight hours, stimulating the growth of seedlings.

Harvesting

On the balcony, the fruits should be picked as they reach the normal size for the variety. Too large fruits weaken the bush. See the seed packet for the maximum fruit length. The more often the fruits are collected, the more they grow. Having lost the harvest, the plant again directs its energy to fruiting - flowering begins, fruit sets, etc.

Most varieties produce a harvest 55-70 days after sowing the seeds. Ripe fruits should be deep green in color and firm when gently squeezed. You need to carefully cut the fruits with pruning shears; you cannot pick them - you can damage the vines.

If you provide the cucumbers with favorable conditions, the harvest will be enough not only for daily salads, but even for small preparations. Each plant produces at least ten fruits, and with some effort you can get 35-40 pieces.

Copy link

Seed selection

If your balcony meets these conditions, then you can start choosing seeds. These should be varieties specifically designed for growing on city balconies, in particular, hybrid varieties of different ripening periods that are not afraid of sudden and extensive temperature changes, which are far from uncommon in the spring.

As stated on the label, the selected varieties are:

shade-tolerant. This helps cope with the limited amount of light, especially in winter;
have small fruits (70-80 mm). Even if such cucumbers are not collected on time, they do not outgrow;
self-pollinating. Some of the flowers on them are male, and some are female, that is, these plants do not need insects for pollination;
early ripening. Even before frost, several harvests can be harvested;
drought-resistant. In case you have to stop watering for a while or when the temperature rises.

photo: growing hybrid cucumbers on the balcony

Among the self-pollinating varieties that are in great demand, we note:

dragonfly,
Sail,
Dubrovsky,
Berendey,
Courage.

They all have:

small leaves. In this case, there will be enough light for all plants,
small internodes on the shoots and numerous ovaries, which will ensure abundant harvests;
developed root system. Such plants can be grown even in relatively small containers.

For reference!

Balcony cucumbers can also be grown from non-self-pollinating varieties, say, Ladoga or Fregat f1, but they require special care.

Growing cucumbers on the balcony in winter

A good harvest of greens can be obtained on the loggia when grown in winter. To do this, it is necessary to insulate the room and supply heating.

You also need to provide the crop with sufficient moisture by spraying the plants or laying a wet cloth on the battery.

To form the ovary, the cucumber must receive a sufficient amount of light. In winter, crops are illuminated with phytolamps . Follow the recommendations given in the article and you will get a good harvest.

From the video you will learn about the secrets of growing tasty and healthy vegetables at home:

Preparing the site

To grow cucumbers, they usually use the simplest containers for balcony flowers.
They are compact and space saving. Containers can be conveniently positioned, taking into account a wide dimensional grid (from 150 mm in width to 850 mm in length). The place intended for seedlings has its own characteristics. Let's highlight the most important ones:

drainage holes necessary to remove excess moisture. This is extremely important, as it prevents rotting of the rhizomes;
stand where excess moisture is collected. They are installed under containers.

The drainage layer is laid out from expanded clay or small fractions of crushed crushed stone. Special mixtures that can be purchased at specialized flower shops are also suitable. They also sell ready-to-use soil saturated with minerals. You can also use land from a suburban area.

Sometimes five-liter plastic bottles are used for growing cucumbers. They are cut and holes are made in them. To protect seedlings from all kinds of pathogenic bacteria, containers should be disinfected. For example, hold them over steam from a boiling pan.

Planting soil

One of the important conditions for a good harvest is the composition of the soil and its quality. You can't go wrong if you use a mixture of vermiculite and peat to prepare the soil.

The following composition of planting material is also popular: taken in equal quantities:

peat,
turf,
humus (fat);
small sawdust.

Table nitrophoska and urea are added to the resulting component mixture in the ratio: 1 bucket: 1 tbsp. l: 1 tsp. It also doesn’t hurt to sprinkle an additional 50 g of potassium, nitrogen or phosphorus fertilizers and ash into the mixture.

Seed preparation

Planting seeds is considered one of the most important stages of growing cucumbers. In order for it to give the desired result, the seed is planted in containers after preliminary germination.

If the balcony is glazed and heated, planting can begin quite early - in the first half of January. Hybrid varieties for balconies are mostly early ripening, and on average the entire ripening process takes from 2 to 2.5 months. Thus, if planted early, the first harvest can be enjoyed in April.

If it is impossible to provide the required temperature in the room, then planting should be delayed until stable warm weather has established outside.

For reference!

But we must not forget that the seedlings need to be planted in their permanent place when they are already strong. Therefore, it is recommended to sow the seeds 30 days before to allow the seedlings to grow.

It is not difficult to achieve maximum seed similarity. For this:

Cucumber seeds are treated with a weak solution of potassium permanganate, dipping the seed into it for 15–20 minutes.

Advice!
If you bought seeds with a colored shell, then they do not need such treatment.

Then the seeds are laid out one at a time on moistened gauze for further germination.
This process will take a maximum of two to three days. All this time you need to ensure that the gauze remains damp.
As soon as the first shoots are visually visible on the gauze, it is time to transplant the young shoots into the appropriate container. These can be disposable cups, on the bottom of which several drainage holes are made with an awl, or special peat-humus containers for seedlings.
Each cup should be provided for only one escape.
Seeds are planted to a depth of 15-20 mm.
Cups with sprouts are kept for one week in a room where the temperature is at least 24 degrees.

We continue to conjure

Unlike humans, plants are guided by the principle: keep their feet (i.e., roots) damp and cold, and their heads (i.e., crown) warm. Most 5 liter plastic bottles are clear or blue or green. Only beer containers are dark brown and UV protected. This is exactly what we need. But... Not all lovers of fresh cucumbers are fans of beer. Dark beer bottles V-5 liters - one or two and too many.

No problem! Take a roll of baking foil and measure 520 (± 20 mm). Cut and knead lightly to create an uneven surface. Cover the perimeter of the bottle using double-sided tape.

You've got the perfect container for growing cucumbers. The roots will not be exposed to UV radiation. Hot sun - excessively warm and dry out the soil, cool nights - excessively cool.

Caring for cucumber seedlings

After three or four cups of seedlings, you can move them to the windowsill, where they can receive sufficient heat and light necessary for their development.

Attention!

Low temperatures can cause irreparable damage to seedlings, so if you are going to ventilate the room, take the cups with seedlings to another room or at least cover them with a towel.

In insufficiently lit rooms, the day can be “extended” by connecting fluorescent lamps at a certain distance from the seedlings.

in the photo: fluorescent lamps on the balcony when growing cucumbers

It is also important that plants need to be protected from direct sunlight.

Scheme for planting cucumbers in a plastic bottle

Successful planting of cucumbers in five-liter bottles is carried out as follows: take 3-5 cucumber seeds and deepen them into moist soil by 2-3 centimeters. You can plant cucumbers in a triangle, in a circle or in a checkerboard pattern. Fill the holes with soil, press down a little with your palm or spatula and carefully pour in warm water.

Latest articles about gardening

How to dilute boric acid for spraying tomatoes

How to graft a melon onto a pumpkin video

How to feed violets?

Top dressing

The seedlings must be kept on the windowsill for at least 4 weeks. During this period, the shoots will have time to gain strength, and the cucumbers will grow quite well on the balcony.

The first month is considered the most active stage in the development of cucumbers, so gardeners strongly recommend supporting plant growth with fertilizing. Fertilizers are applied 2-3 times a month.

The simplest feeding option is a urea solution (1 tbsp per 3 liters of water). To feed each shoot, use half a glass of solution.
Another version of the feeding mixture consists of the following component reagents:

ammonium and potassium nitrate (4 and 12 each, respectively);
superphosphate (25);
magnesium sulfate (4);

The calculation in grams is given for 8 liters of water.

Attention!

Overuse of fertilizing can have the opposite effect. It is better to follow the golden rule and fertilize the seedlings at intervals of at least 10 days.

Preparing seeds for sowing

Cucumber seeds should be prepared before sowing on the balcony. First, the planting material is heated in a room at a temperature of +25 degrees. How long to keep the seeds in such conditions can be found on the packaging. Usually one month is enough.

The planting material needed for sowing has no external damage or deformation. After heating, such seeds should be placed on gauze pre-moistened in a 1% solution of potassium permanganate for up to half an hour or kept in Fitosporin-M for two hours.

Some gardeners additionally warm up the planting material. To do this, gardeners place the seeds on a radiator and keep them for 10 hours at a temperature of +60. However, you can do without this procedure.

At the end, the prepared cucumber seeds must be placed on a wet cloth or placed in a bag and stored in a warm place for two days. At this time, the material must be periodically moistened. At the end of the specified period, the first shoots should appear from the seeds.

Transfer of shoots

Planting in permanent soil has a strict time frame: no earlier than a month after planting, but no later than one week after the last feeding. Before planting seedlings (about an hour), the soil mixture must be watered with hot water to sufficiently moisten the substrate.

The shoot is carefully removed from the cup. In order not to touch or injure the delicate rhizomes, it is replanted together with a lump of earth. Make a hole in the soil mixture, say, with a garden trowel, and place the young seedling in the hole.

For reference!

Seedlings in peat humus pots are planted along with the pot.

What care do balcony cucumbers need?

Cucumbers on the balcony give an excellent harvest. Photo
Just a few fairly simple rules will help you properly organize the care of cucumber crops planted on the balcony.

During the first week after completing the transfer of seedlings to containers, the shoots are watered only once.
After 8–10 days you can start tying. Determining the exact time for this is not difficult. The guideline is the number of leaves on the seedling - there should be more than four.
At a height of about one and a half meters, a wire is pulled parallel to the containers and pieces of thin twine of the same length are prepared.

For reference!
Instead of garter wire, you can also use clotheslines.

One end of the twine is carefully secured to the cucumber stem, 20–25 mm away from the roots, the other is tied to the wire. The stem is wrapped around the twine.
After tying, the soil is loosened at intervals of approximately 7 days to saturate the upper layers of the soil with oxygen. It is also necessary to periodically remove the tendrils so that one stem is formed and remove weeds.
It is also necessary to remove the lateral shoots so that they do not interfere with fruit set.
When the shoot reaches its target, the crown of the plant is pinched, that is, all leaves except one are removed.
The frequency of watering an adult plant depends on the length of the shoots and the outside temperature. So, they are watered as soon as the need arises. As a rule, the frequency of watering is 3 days. In this case, each bush takes approximately 2 to 2.5 liters. settled water.
Not only the soil should be moist, but also the air. For this purpose, you can keep a bucket filled with water on the balcony. In the evenings, you can also spray the leaves using a spray bottle.
By the beginning of autumn, when the temperature is at night, it is recommended to cover containers and pots with burlap at night so that large rhizomes that have managed to grow into the drainage do not freeze. You can also use a thin blanket.
Plants can be protected from strong gusts of wind using ordinary plastic film, which is pulled up like a regular curtain. If the weather improves, the film can be easily removed.

Pest Prevention

Various insects also love conditions so favorable for the growth of cucumbers. To protect the crop, they resort to spraying the cucumber bush with special preparations or use folk remedies.

Fighting aphids

Tobacco decoction is very effective in combating aphids.

They tear open 10 inexpensive cigarettes, pour the tobacco into a container filled with a liter of water and put everything on the fire. After boiling, the composition is boiled for about 10 minutes.
Then the resulting decoction is diluted with another liter of water. The disinfectant is ready.
The infusion is sprayed over the damaged leaves. Aphids sensitive to nicotine die.

Whitefly control

Prevention can be carried out using a more concentrated tobacco decoction. It is prepared in the same way, but is additionally infused for 24 hours.
Not everyone realizes that a vacuum cleaner with adjustable power will help to combat whiteflies quite effectively.
Pests are collected from cucumber leaves with a vacuum cleaner operating in minimum power mode.

Fighting spider mites

All of the above methods will not help in the case of spider mites, but this parasite is afraid of garlic.

A strong garlic infusion is prepared from a liter of water with the addition of a chopped head of garlic. The broth is left to steep for about 20 minutes, after which laundry soap diluted with water (about 15 g) is added to it.
Next, the composition is diluted with water to obtain 5 liters of liquid.
This is the disinfectant solution that is used to spray cucumber bushes.

Thus, you can deal with major pests without resorting to harmful chemicals.