Golden Acre Home & Garden Centre's Plant Library

Group/Class:  Heirloom

Description:

A high yielding and vigorous vining, heirloom variety; produces 8" long dark green cucumbers with round blunted ends; sweet and crunchy, perfect for slicing, snacking salads and pickling; trellis or staking is recommended for straight fruit'

Edible Qualities

Straight Eight Cucumber is an annual vegetable plant that is typically grown for its edible qualities. It produces dark green long cucumbers (which are technically 'berries') with light green flesh which can be harvested at any point. The cucumbers have a sweet taste and a crunchy texture.

The cucumbers are most often used in the following ways:

• Fresh Eating
• Eating When Cooked/Prepared
• Pickling

Planting & Growing

Straight Eight Cucumber will grow to be about 8 inches tall at maturity, with a spread of 5 feet. When planted in rows, individual plants should be spaced approximately 24 inches apart. This vegetable plant is an annual, which means that it will grow for one season in your garden and then die after producing a crop.

This plant is typically grown in a designated vegetable garden. It should only be grown in full sunlight. It does best in average to evenly moist conditions, but will not tolerate standing water. It is not particular as to soil pH, but grows best in rich soils. It is quite intolerant of urban pollution, therefore inner city or urban streetside plantings are best avoided. This is a selected variety of a species not originally from North America.; however, as a cultivated variety, be aware that it may be subject to certain restrictions or prohibitions on propagation.

Straight Eight Cucumber is a good choice for the vegetable garden, but it is also well-suited for use in outdoor pots and containers. It is often used as a 'filler' in the 'spiller-thriller-filler' container combination, providing the canvas against which the larger thriller plants stand out. Note that when growing plants in outdoor containers and baskets, they may require more frequent waterings than they would in the yard or garden.