This is a common suggestion for many plants. Will Suckering or Leaf-removal Reduce Disease? I found no evidence that removing leaves increases pollination. So, removal of more than one leaf at a time is not recommended.” “ Cucumber yield is directly proportional to leaf area. They claim that it makes it easier for pollinators to fine the flowers and it increases airflow, reducing diseases.
Some people also suggest that you should remove leaves from plants. Pruning delayed harvest and resulted in smaller production. The same study found that “Total yield of unpruned plants and plants pruned up to heights of 30 and 60 cm was 1.47, 1.22 and 1.16 kg/plant, respectively. It shows that pruning can significantly delay the first harvest. This was in greenhouse culture and looked at yield in the first 10 days of harvest. Unpruned plants resulted in 1.7 times as many fruits as pruning the fruit on plants up to heights of 30 cm. If you have a long growing season you might not worry about this, but in cooler climates we want an early crop because the season is so short. Consequently, flowering and first harvest is delayed. Removing suckers reduces the plants ability to develop enough leaves to support female flowers. Most greenhouses have limited space and need to produce high yields so they plant closer together and sucker. However, when pruned to a single stem, plants can be grown closer together, and so the yield per growing area increases. They have no choice but to prune suckers.Ī study looking at field grown cucumbers found that unpruned plants produced a higher total number of fruits, length, diameter and weight of fruits, compared to single stem pruning. In such a situation, not pruning suckers would produce a big mess of interlaced vines. To manage the vines they are grown vertically, usually one vine per vertical string. If you watch some of these videos you will notice that they are growing cucumbers in a greenhouse, or plastic shelter which has limited space to let the vine roam along the ground. Such sites also make claims for higher yield and less disease, but never actually show any evidence to support these claims. There is lots of advice online and on YouTube that says you should sucker cucumbers. To remove a sucker, simply grab it and pinch it off, or cut it off, just like a tomato sucker. The arrow in the above picture points to a sucker. Before long you have two main stems both of which produce more nodes, more flowers and more main stems. If this sucker is allowed to grow it produces a side branch which starts behaving just like the main stem. Each node produces the main stem, a tendril used to wrap around things, a flower and a sucker. Pruning Cucumbers – Will It Produce a Higher Yield?Ĭucumbers are vines just like tomatoes and they grow in a very similar fashion.
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