Last edited by shiny on November 10, 2026. View history
A variety of cucumber
The cucumber is an annual creeping vine that roots in the ground and grows up trellises or other supporting frames, wrapping around supports with thin, spiraling tendrils. The plant can root in a soilless medium, then sprawl along the ground in the absence of a supporting structure. The vine has large leaves that form a canopy over the fruits.
A plant grows with warmth, not with days. A growing degree day is one day's worth of useful warmth: how many degrees the day's average temperature is above the lowest temperature the crop grows at. Add them up from planting and you know how far along the crop is, whatever the calendar says.
Say that lowest temperature is 10°C. A day averaging 17°C gives 7 growing degree days. A day averaging 8°C gives none, as it is too cold for the crop to grow. That is why the same lettuce takes about 50 days in a summer and 90 in an autumn: it needs the same total warmth either way.
For gherkin, the FAO EcoCrop database gives a lowest growing temperature of 8°C and a shortest growing cycle of 40 days at its best temperature, about 660 growing degree days to a first harvest.
Where you've told us where your garden is, we use this and the weather there to predict when your gherkin will be ready to harvest. We don't use it for how long a plant lives or when it finishes: we go by what members have logged for that.
Only plantings by members who have set their locations are shown.
by ribbonknight,
The first plant is a cucumber, Mexican sour gherkin, which I've grown from seed. Firstly, yay, the things I grew from seed this year have been way more successful than last year!
The cucumber looks like this: 
thyme
If sown now, expect a first harvest in about 40 to 80 days.
From the growing cycle in the FAO EcoCrop database, which is the same wherever it is grown.
Data from the FAO EcoCrop database for Cucumis anguria L.
| Family / Taxonomy | Magnoliopsida Dilleniidae Violales Cucurbitaceae |
|---|---|
| Life form | herb, vine |
| Life span | annual |
| Habit | climber/scrambler/scadent |
| Optimal soil depth | medium (50-150 cm) |
| Optimal soil texture | medium, organic |
| Optimal soil fertility | high |
| Optimal soil drainage | well (dry spells) |
| Optimal soil salinity | low (<4 dS/m) |
| Photoperiod | short day (<12 hours), neutral day (12-14 hours), long day (>14 hours) |
Resources outside Growstuff.
Gherkin
collard greens
Savoy cabbage
buttercrunch lettuce
striped cavern tomato
Photos
shiny harvested 2.
View all gherkin seeds