Favorite slicing cucumbers
 

I grew some different cucumbers for my Dad last year. I grew pickling and slicing and my dad liked the slicing ones.


I grew Diva and it was a hot year and it didn't do too well.


I just wanted to see what some of the members favorite slicing cucumber varieties are I want to try some this season.


Thanks



Jim

Have you already tried Straight Eight and Marketmore 76? Those are old standards but still excellent cucumbers and widely available. We grow them every year. The plants always get disease from the cucumber beetles but we get lots of tasty, crisp cucumbers from them before they die.
If you grow hybrids, I'd recommend Burpee Hybrid II, another one we grow every year. We've also had good luck with Eureka Hybrid, but that's a medium-length cucumber, to about 5".
Bristol Hybrid and Pointsett 76 (not hybrid) didn't do well for us, but it could have been the conditions that year.

My fave is Green Fingers which are very prolific, sweet, and tasty, but the cucumber beetles eventually found them and totally decimate them :(.

Linda

I grow Marketmore, Straight 8. and an oriental
variety. I am do not do much pickling.

If you are not specifically seeking an open pollinated variety, cucumbers are Something that really benefit from the excellent disease resistance and production you will see in hybrids. For my self I do not grow a lot but Olympian is a great gynoecious hybrid that I’ve grown in my hot greenhouse in summer and although the seeds are atrociously expensive I also splurge on a pkt of piccolino for the beautiful seedless small cucumbers they produce. Perfect for snacking.
In general I think that hybrid varieties would do best in adverse conditions
KarenO

Over the years I have found cucumbers require considerably more watering than most other garden plants. You mention your summer was hot, I wonder if they could have benefited from more water? A slicer I grow every year I’d recommend is Sweeter Yet.

I like Sweet Success. The seeds are expensive. They stay sweet and are tasty.
Barb

I'm partial to Sweet Slice & Sweet Success varieties. Both are very good
In my opinion.

Dan

Another vote for sweet success. I'm not much of a cucumber guy as most taste bitter to me, but these I like and they are very large cucumbers that are great for slicing.

Carmen is very good (I think it's what is known as english cucumber in usa). It is a hybrid, unfortunately for cucumbers the old varieties don't really compare favorably to the new hybrids. It does need good night temperatures. In general it seems cucumbers like rather hot as long as you can keep the water supply high. I read somewhere that you should treat it as a tropical plant.

Another vote for Sweet Success. We have also grown Tasty Green for slicing and Homemade Pickles for pickling spears. Another gardener has been growing Eureka as it seems to be disease resistant - better than others. 2021 will be seeing a grow out of 2 new-to-me varieties - Poinsett 76 and Dasher II. We may even try the Eureka.

Thanks for the great replies everyone!


I'm looking forward to trying out some of these this season!

I have grown Marketmore , Straight 8 and other old favorites successfully in the past, but with the hotter summers we now have they don't do so well unless in at least partial shade, which I'm not able to provide. Same with the newer varieties, such as Sweet Success, Diva and others. I have been growing the bush varieties Bush Champion and Space Saver quite successfully for 3 or 4 years now. They have short vines with good leaf cover and produce lots of great slicers up to 8 inches. They seem to tolerate the direct sun and heat longer than the runners and climbers.

We have a lot of new hybrid varieties of cucumbers that do not have a gene that causes bitterness. So even in worse conditions, cucumbers and their parts are not bitter. If anyone is interested, I can send some seeds to test.
Vladimír

Even my Diva cucumbers had a touch of bitterness by August! But the Asian one stayed sweet, and I had a beit alpha (middle eastern) type that stayed sweet.