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~ Seed for CUCUMBERS ~ You'll notice that we don't offer any 'greenhouse' cucumbers. Greenhouse types - the very long thin dark green ones - may look just like the ones that you buy in the supermarkets, but they're more work to grow and frankly don't taste as good. We prefer real vegetables that actually taste of something - not like the supermarket varieties. So we offer really good, easily grown cucumbers. You can grow our varieties either inside or outdoors. We find that actually in a normal summer we get just as good results outside - perhaps because there are more insects to pollinate the flowers. But in a very cold wet summer plants under cover can do better, and they do start cropping earlier in the season. To clear up any confusion, these are real, non-hybrid cucumbers, and they're much easier and less fussy than the hybrids. You don't need to pick the male flowers off, and they don't go bitter if you grow several types. . .basically just plant them and let them get on with it. And of course if you wait long enough, you will get seeds in your cucumbers that you can grow next year! Start the seed off somewhere warm in a small pot from late April (mid May if you're going to grow them on outside) and plant them out once they have 3 to 4 true leaves.   ~ REAL CUCUMBERS ~ 'Miniature White' Cucumber These fantastic little yellow-white cucumbers are Ben's favourite. Best picked when about 2" long, and terrific in salads. They have very soft thin skin, without any bitterness, and distinctly sweet crunchy flesh. We know a lot of people with smaller families also like this variety because they can use a whole cucumber in a salad, and not be left with half cukes in the fridge. The vines are very compact, start to bear early, and climb happily up beans or netting. Can't be beaten! Sweet, pretty colour. Crunchy! Order CuMW - 20 seed[CO1] £1.75   'Wautoma' Cucumber An excellent cucumber from the breeding program at the University of Wisconsin in the 1980's, this was recommended to us by cucumber expert Robert Bruns. It can either be used small for pickles or left to grow for use as a slicing cucumber. The plants set many lightly striped dark green fruit , with tiny white spines that come off easily. We got an awful lot of cucumbers off this one! Quick to set fruit, bitter-free, and Robert says it resists nearly all known cucumber diseases. (anthracnose, angular leaf spot, CMV, DM, PM, & scab!) You can grow it indoors or out, and we think it'll be quite a few years before we find anything that can even come near it in terms of yield or reliability. We grow huge numbers outdoors here in Wales with no trouble at all. Provide some support outdoors, under cover quite happy on the ground. Order CuWA - 12 seed [OG1] £1.99 'Parisian Pickling' Cucumber (new!) A proper pickling gherkin-type cucumber with a long history. This was selected in the 1800's for the cooler northern climate of Paris when cucumbers became fashionable in the city - other 'southern types' just couldn't crop reliably that far north. Despite its age, it is still a very reliable, early and productive cucumber, making lots of fruit with no fuss, even outdoors in the UK. This was originally thought of a pickling cucumber -picked small as 'cornichons'- but we find it works really well letting it get bigger and used in salads. You would of course need to peel it if you let it get huge or over-ripe (the skin will go bitter when mature), but its perfectly mild up to quite a normal size, so this a good choice if you only have room for one type of cucumber, but want pickles as well as salad. We used lots in salad this summer. Order CuPP - 20 seed £1.57 'Tamra' Cucumber WEB SPECIAL This superb variety was thought lost years ago, but cucumber breeder Robert Bruns heard of our search for an early, disease resistant, non-bitter, female-flowering cucumber, and sent us the last few seeds he had. From those few seeds we regenerated this variety back in 2002 - & it's great! The female flowers are formed in large numbers very early on, even on the main stem, without any pinching out or pruning, and soon set dark green cucumbers, almost spineless. Everyone who has tried it loves it. But because it makes very few seeds, we simply couldn't manage to keep it in the catalogue, and three years ago we stopped listing it. However, someone who had got seed from us before - Alan Fryer - had been so impressed by it that when he heard we'd dropped it he got in touch . After hearing the problem, he decided to take it on as a project - and produced seed for us. Undaunted by its seedlessness, he has somehow managed to produce 100 packets every year since then, and so thanks to his heroic efforts we are once again able to offer this terrific cucumber. Please consider saving your own seed, we believe these are the last Tamra seed on the planet. Alan has rescued it for now, but more people need to look after this one, it would be a shame to lose it. Order CuTa - just 10 seed of this one for £2.15 ~ Some other INTERESTING and TASTY THINGS ~ from the CUCUMBER FAMILY 'West Indian Gherkin' Not strictly a cucumber - a slightly different species. Wonderful little ovoid & bizarrely spined fruits produced in quantity giving baby gherkins to eat fresh or pickle. They taste exactly like a good cucumber with no bitterness. The spines are harmlessly rubbery - totally edible - so no rubbing or peeling required. Best grown under cover, although in warmer areas you could try outdoors in a very sunny spot. Quite happy on the ground, no need to trellis. Always popular! We find these just as easy to grow (and more fun) than real cucumbers. Some people have pointed out that this variety is particularly useful if you are growing parthenocarpic hybrid (=seedless) cucumbers in your greenhouse, and want to have a gherkin type for pickling as well. As they are a different species, they won't fertilise the hybrid variety, so you will still get seedless cukes. (We would of course hope you will abandon the hybrids in favour of real types like we offer here) Similarly, you can grow West Indian Gherkins and a standard open pollinated cucumber together, and still save the seed from both. 6-10' vine, numerous little 1-2" fruit. Easy. Small but vigorous scrambling vine. Always popular! Order CuWI - 20 seed [OG1] £1.49 ~ Various ACHOCHA ~ Achocha is an unusual vegetable from South America that is remarkably easy to grow. It is impressively productive, easy to grow, and can be used raw in salads when small a bit like a cucumber. But the best thing is that they really taste just like sweet green peppers when fried. We offer two varieties, plus an exploding one." Fat Baby" is very early, and the easiest to grow outdoors. "Caigua" is bigger, a different species, and just as delicious, but a bit later to fruit and best under cover. The exploding cucucmber is just for fun, but it tastes great too. 'Fat Baby' - Easy climbing vine, tastes like sweet peppers when cooked! Fat Baby is remarkably easy to grow. It is impressively productive, even outdoors, and can be used raw in salads when small a bit like a cucumber. It is a quick and vigorous climber and you can climb it up and over anything, including garden sheds, although it does best in a warm sunny spot. Definitely best outdoors though and not in a polytunnel, because it tends to take over if grown inside. The best thing however, is that the mature fruit taste very much like green peppers when fried - yet they can be grown outdoors with ease and set masses of fruit with no effort. To cook, simply cut open and flick out the seeds (saving a few for future planting of course) and then slice and fry just as a green pepper. Very similar taste to green peppers, just much easier to grow! Here they are on a very popular pizza Kate made for a dinner party last summer ( the tomato sauce is of course yellow - using Plum Lemon Tomato - just for fun, the achochas are the green bits.) For the botanically curious among you, the Latin name of this is said to be Cyclanthera pedata, but we are beginning to suspect it is actually Cyclanthera brachyastacha Order AcFB - 10 seed [OG1] £1.89   'The Exploding Cucumber' The Fat Baby have always been a great hit both with us and everyone who has tried them. So we were intrigued to find that they have close relative known as the Exploding Cucumber, whose Latin name is - quite aptly - "Cyclanthera explodens". We've been after these for ages and ages - and finally managed to get hold of some seed last year, and they are now growing well outdoors and in the polytunnel. Anyways, these grow similarly to the Achocha - a tendrilly climbing vine . The fruit are similar, except having an even weirder shape, and when mature, they burst open at the slightest touch, flinging their seeds out across the garden! Eating use is the same as Achocha; the fruit can be used small (1/2 inch) in salads or mature (1 inch, exploded) cooked. No need to deseed them first as they do this for you at the slightest provocation! They are of course also an excellent thing to enter in your local horticultural show for the 'unusually shaped vegetable' category. We are sorry that the packet is smaller than we would like, and the price is higher than we would like too. However, this due to the obvious difficulties involved in seed collection . . . . . . .   HEALTH WARNING. DANGER OF EYE INJURY! HARD SEED IS EJECTED AT GREAT SPEED. DO NOT HOLD RIPE FRUIT NEAR FACE. HARVEST FRUIT AFTER IT HAS OPENED. DO NOT ALLOW CHILDREN TO PLAY WITH FRUIT. We know this sounds silly, but it is a real danger and we must recommend that YOU SHOULD WEAR EYE PROTECTION WHILE HARVESTING AND PROCESSING FRUIT. Order AcEX - 8 seed [OG1] £2.25 'Caigua' Achocha NEW IN EUROPE This is a great new true Achocha (species Cyclanthera pedata) we have found, originally from the Underwood Gardens collection. Achocha are very popular in South America, but not known in Europe because most varieties aren't adapted to our shorter daylengths. We really like Achocha, and we were sure that there had to exist varieties that were good for Europe, somewhere. So in 2008 Ben tracked down various types from around the world, to try out, and this is the first new one to come out of these trials. Caigua is really early to flower, in midsummer. The fruit are much bigger than others - a decent 7cm long, and delicious fried. We have been eating them in lunch all summer. They will fruit outdoors, but they're more productive in a polytunnel or greenhouse. (If you are growing outdoors, you should consider the Fat Baby instead as it is totally happy without any protection.) Order AcCG - 8 seed [OG1] £1.95   Melothrie We are pleased to be able to offer another unusual cucumber relative that is quite easy to grow, especially up some netting in a polytunnel. The plants are quite compact so you don't use much more than a couple of feet of tunnel space, and you'll get lots of fruit. Originally given to us by Bruno Ansker from France, this is a rampant scrambling vine that is just covered in hundreds and hundreds of little green & white fruit about an inch long. Very, very easy to grow and great fun. These little fruit taste just like a cucumber and have a nice fresh crunchy texture. They're great for pickles, stirfry, & they look really good whole in salads. Everyone who tries them thinks they're great! We like to put out a bowl of them (whole) for nibbles at parties, and Kate has been pickling the (large) surplus for use as gherkins. Grow outdoors in a sunny spot, or under cover, but not as hot as glasshouse cucumbers would want. So a coolish polytunnel is ideal. SORRY SOLD OUT FOR 2010; we'll try to grow more this summer Note: This is one of these plants that still need their scientific classification sorted out. Some people say it should be called Melothria scabra, others think it is better called Apodanthera pringlei. Actually, the whole classification of this branch of the cucurbits is a bit vague - and one day no doubt some specialist somewhere (with more time than us!) will get enthusiastic enough to grow them all next to each other and sort it all out. And . . for those of you who call to ask - we have tried them outdoors & they did fine. Not as rampant as in the tunnel, but still pretty good! Saving Cucumber Seed: Here is Josie, aged 2, saving cucumber seed. It's really simple. Let them get over-ripe, scoop out the seeds, and put in jar with water for a couple of days or so. The good seeds sink and the bad ones float (being full of air). Pour off the top 1/2 of the jar, losing the floating bad seed and debris. Refill & repeat a few times until you are left with just the good heavy seed. Then drain the good seeds through a sieve and onto a plate to dry, or onto a newspaper if the weather is cold and damp. It is important that they haven't crossed with another variety. And of course you can only save the seed from real varieties, hybrids won't work. Detailed seed-saving instructions are included with your seeds, so you can do this yourself.