Grow Your Own Magazine

This is another one of those silly questions, but this is my first year of growing cucumbers. I want to know how tall I should let my cucumbers grow. They are being grown in pots in the greenhouse up canes. The type I'm growing is Telepathy.

Cucumbers can be very large, vigorous plants. I haven't grown Telepathy, but several other varieties, indoor and out.

I find they just keep on growing until the early autumn - not just upwards, but outwards, too, so I use the tallest canes I can find an make a ladder with cross pieces. Large cucumbers are heavy fruit and need to be given strong support so the added horizontal canes are very helpful.

So Cutecumber, I just let them grow, is that what you're saying, or do you pinch them out at some stage?

I haven't grown Telepathy before but I do grow F1 All Female varieties - Femspot, Pepeinex 69 and Topsy.
As these are F1 all female varieties, bred for growing undercover, the fruits all form from the central stem, so all side shoots are removed, and the plant tied in as it grows. I grow mine up 8ft canes, and they can reach the top no problem (about 7ft as the bottom foot of the cane is in the ground)
I know another local grower who grows Marketmore (a ridge cucumber) in his tunnels and he grows them up netting and just lets them go - they can get a bit unruly and the fruits may be smaller but there are more of them)

__________________
Rat

British by birth
Scottish by the Grace of God

[size="1"]Journal updated Tuesday 5th August

I just let mine grow until it gets impossible to manage them (i.e they start rampantly taking over the roof of the greenhouse!) they go mad, in which case I have to trim them back. I always leave the main, original stem, though.

I have a lot to look forward to. It seems to me Cutecumber, that you have a lot of experience with cucumbers (please, no modesty), so perhaps you can answer another question; this would then save me starting a new "thread".
I know about male and female flowers (I think), but on the lower parts of my plants I have small clusters of what looks like flower buds. I have removed one or two male flowers from this area, and I do have some younger cucumbers forming further up the stem, so do you feel that these lower groups could just be male flowers, in which case, I should remove them, or should I leave them and see what happens.