Like tomatoes, cucumbers are well suited to being grown in a greenhouse where warmer temperatures and the support of vertical growth can produce huge harvests. Eric Ball (Rural Studio’s farm manager) and the students constructed a trellis and began cucumber seeds back at the beginning of March and now their efforts are bearing fruit.

• 

• 

As the cucumber plants grow, Eric pruned off the side shoots so that each plant had a single growing stem, and he helped train the tendrils to grab the trellis. This reduces crowding, promotes good cucumber health and production, and improves ventilation.

• 

• 

• 

Each leaf node produces a side shoot, a flower, and a tendril for climbing.

• 

• 

Until advances in plant breeding, cucumbers were typically monoecious, which means that each individual plant produces both male and female flowers. This also means that they are in need of a pollinator to transfer pollen from the male flower’s stamen to the female flower’s stigma (this can occur on flowers from the same plant). Since these cucumbers are being grown in a greenhouse, where pollinators are infrequent visitors, this means that ordinary cucumbers won’t set fruit unless hand-pollinated—a laborious and time-consuming activity for these productive and delicate-flowered plants.

• 

• 

• 

• 

As such, Eric selected a hybrid cucumber variety that is both parthenocarpic, meaning that fruit can develop without being fertilized, and gynoecious, meaning it produces primarily female flowers, since the redundant male flowers would only divert the plant’s limited resources away from fruit production.

• 

•