I got some the other day at Home Depot for those who aren't close to Summerwinds.

Thanks for posting this--I guess it's time. :) I'm excited.

Take care all,
Grant

Follow-up ... they are spreading and blooming with tiny yellow flowers, but no sign of female flowers or fruit.

They have twining tendrils and are climbing the eggplants, so I'm going to have to make a trellis.

yes you want to trellis them to keep them going up and not become a tangled mess. They grow rather long. Mine got to 5-6 ft easily, although I don't remember those tendrills being of much help in holding the plants on the trellis. What I do is I have 2 4x8 ft wire fence panels (the ones that have holes that are about 4-6 inches. I just weave the plants back and forth through the holes and that's enough to support them. Pretty soon they will start producing like crazy. I can't wait.

I have never had these before so this year I decided to start some from seed. My two plants are currently making their way up a six foot trellis, but like lazygardens, I have no signs of female flowers on either plant. There are tons of male flowers though. Is this typical for this variety?

It's pretty typical for them to produce only male flowers early on. Once they get going though, you'll have a hard time keeping up. I started mine indoors in mid February and picked my first 3 cucumbers about a week ago. I now have 9 cucumbers on 2 plants that will be ready to pick in about 5 days....and they seem to just keep on going!

PIck 'em early when they are young Don't worry you will get more, and more and more...

I had two or three plants a couple years ago planted from seed in non prepared soil! Just loosened up a bit with shovel, no fertilizer or additives of any kind. They grew and produced like mad. I was so sick of them by end of summer just the smell of cucumber turned me off. I couldn't give em away fast enough.

I love them. I like them even better than the regular cucumbers and I don't even mind letting one or two get big. They actually taste just as good to me when they're 4 inches around and 2 ft long as when they're smaller.

My house-mate has coworkers who are eagerly waiting for our garden to start producing.

I don't think 6 Armenian cucumber plants can keep ahead of an office-full of mid-Easterners and Indians.

I'll go consider what trellising we can do.

Woohoo! My first one. Now how long should this be when I pick it? I've read differing opinions on how long they should be when picked.

{{gwi:402082}}

Here is a link that might be useful: May 27th garden pics

Why you...!!!! mine are so far behind. got started quite late. Anyway, it's really a personal choice when to harvest them. In my opinion they're pretty good at any size, just don't let them get too huge. They will grow fast so I'd say you can try one at about 8-10 inches, and try a few bigger ones, but I don't see the point of harvesting when they're smaller than that because they taste just as good when bigger and they don't get bitter. but this is just my opinion.

Thanks green,

I was originally thinking of letting this one go to about 12 inches or so. I just wasn't sure if there was an optimal length for picking and eating.

One other question. Can these get sunburned? These are trellised and exposed more to the afternoon sun.

Dang! Mine have a lot of flowers, but not a sign of any fruits.

lazy,

I've noticed it's a little tricky to see the little female flowers. The color of the tiny cucumber matches the rest of the plant, especially the stem. I didn't even notice the one above until after it had already flowered. There was another one right behind it that didn't get pollinated.

Looking VERY closely, I see some female flowers and bitty baby cukes.

They are less in-your-face than the squash I'm used to.

Sandhill Preservation sells seed of a selected variety of Armenian cucumber called "The Duke" (not available this year, though).

There is a "Painted Serpent" cucumber which is also a melon. It has smoother skin than "Armenian" with dark and light green stripes. Not prolific in my garden. A little on the sweet side.

Among "real" cucumbers, I have found "Summer Dance" to be the most heat-tolerant here, but I'm not sure they'd make it in Phoenix. Must be trellised or grown in part shade here. You can buy seed from Pinetree.

My plant has female flowers for two weeks now but still no cucumber. I did try to hand-pollinate. Still no success. My plant is huge and I let it sprawl on the lawn as well as climb on the pergola. No fertilizer so far. Did I do anything wrong?

I love armenian cucumber, which I planted quite a few of this year. I also decided to try lemon cucumbers, which I'm surprised to find seem even more heat resistant than the Armenians. They are only about a month old, so no cukes to eat yet, but big, strong vines and no wilting in this heat. I have big hopes for these!