European Forcing Cucumbers

This year I decided to spend slightly more for my cucumber seeds and purchased Telegraph Improved cucumber seeds, which are a European forcing cucumber. I read that they set fruit without pollination, and that they only produced a few male flowers.

I kind of expected female flowers right from the start, but that was not the case. Like other cucumber varieties these plants apparently do not begin to produce female flowers until they are fairly mature. Well, at least mature enough to support reproduction.

The magic number, at least in my case, seems to be four feet in length. Yesterday I was rewarded with the appearance of two female flowers at the very growing tip of one of the plants. This morning there were two more female flowers developing at the base of the plants. Keep up the good work girls!