I have a bumper crop of cucumbers this year!
Four varieties from the left are: Tokiwa, Sweet Success, North Carolina Pickling, and Diva. In our taste test last evening the unanimous winner (two tasters) was Diva. I've tried for years to grow Diva and this is the first year I have gotten nice vines and big pretty Diva cukes. Nice and crisp, mild and just overall delicious.
Next were a tie: Tokiwa (delicious and crisp, but large seeds) and Sweet Success (not quite as good taste as Diva and Tokiwa, but nice and crisp). The pickler (which is still fantastic - I love the blocky white fruits with tiny green seeds) was the least crisp and flavorful of the four.
10 comments:
Excellent info about your cukes! I love reading about taste test results. I'll be passing along the info to my family on Cape Cod--maybe they'll try to grow Divas next year.
Thanks for the review! I grew only Sweet Success this year and I really liked them. Very productive and disease resistant. Usually by now my cukes have succumbed to wilt, but the Sweet Success are still going strong.
Alll your plants look so healthy! No sign of any pest damage or disease as far as I can tell. Beautiful.
Good to get a tasting review, not sure if we can get Diva here. It is our first year to grow any cucumbers and we have been extremely excited to have had 4 already! They are Green Burpless, the name tells the tale! I am so looking forward to tomatoes to complete my salad plate!
Marian(LondonUK)
nice cucumbers, lady! this is what I want to concentrate on growing next year, so i really appreciate the post. I am going to find out what grows down here in Virginia next year, I guess
I was looking for a different variety to grow next year because mine didn't taste too good this year. Thanks for the info! I'm going to keep Diva, Sweet Success, and Tokiwa in mind now.
This is my first year growing cucumbers, and I planted Marketmore because those were the locally available seedlings. They are enormous and did I plant too many.
I have a refrigerator stuffed with them. You know when you start seriously considering a recipe for cucumber marmalade, that you overplanted.
But the taste is really bland. I wonder if that's characteristic of them, or if the amount of rain we had in July (11 inches) had something to do with it...
I bet all this rain could affect the flavor. It just washes all the nutrients away I think.
I've never grown Marketmore. But its described as mild. (In comparison, Diva is described as "delectable, with a flavor that combines sweetness with a genuine cucumber bite".) Its nice to have a few to compare.
Its hard to guess right on how much to plant. I am so happy to have had too much lettuce this year. I even got to compost a fair amount. But today I ate my last head, so again I planed wrong with the mid season lettuce. Oh well..
Cucumber marmalade sounds good - maybe like sweet pickles.
My parents are growing white-skinned cucumbers and they are WONDERFUL! Wonder if they're the same as you have.
The cucumber marmalade recipe starts with "Take three cups of sugar" :-)
I grew Japanese Long (Baker Creek Seeds, open pollinated) for the first time this year. It is terrific. It is about 1-1.5" thick and maybe 10-12" long. It is incredibly crisp and has a terrific flavor ... assertive but not bitter. It has the growing properties of an English burpless variety. It should be grown in a big pot to hang or as a climber. I would not grow it on the ground as the fruit will curl in an instant and the vines seem to like lots of air.
Paul
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