How many cucumber plants per 5 gallon bucket can be grown? If you are a gardener who doesn’t have much space in your garden but wants to grow cucumbers, then you must have thought of it.
As cucumbers are very popular as a vegetable and cherished as a vital element of salad worldwide, we know how much you want to grow cucumbers in your little garden.
Our experts will help you with how you can produce this vegetable in a bucket.
Contents
How Many Cucumber Plants Per 5 Gallon Bucket?
A 5-gallon bucket can grow two healthy cucumber plants easily, whether the plants are bush versions or standard vining cultivars; ensure the bucket receives enough sunlight, a rich mixture of compost with bog moss, or coconut fiber and leaf mold.
The first good news is you can grow cucumbers in a 5 gallon bucket in your container garden, but the question is how many of them you can grow in the bucket. Planting one or two more is possible when using bush version cucumbers, but avoiding this would be better. Keep reading the section to learn every essential fact you need to grow cucumbers in 5-gallon buckets or 5-gallon grow bags.
– Vining Cucumber
The vining type produces a good amount of cucumbers comparable to the bush type, but it requires more room to grow than the bush type due to the need to grow all the vines.
Besides, it needs support for the growth of a vine with a trellis, whereas bush-type cucumber plants don’t demand a trellis though they produce fewer fruits. You must always be sure that you would choose bush-type plants for your five-gallon bucket as it’s more competent for small spaces.
– Days To Grow
Usually, most cucumbers, including bush and vining types, take around 55 to almost 65 days to grow. In this period, from germination to harvesting processes take place. The harvest time of the specific cucumbers is also written on the seed packet.
Within 48 to 72 hours, the planted seeds will become three to four inches long, then remove all but two cucumber seedlings per pot with scissors or other tools. You must add a cup of water to each plant to keep them growing accurately every 10 -14 days.
– Best Season
If you want to plant cucumbers outdoors in the bucket, then you have to plant them no less than two weeks after the final frost date has gone because, being a warm-season plant, this vegetable cannot tolerate cold or frost. Around 70 degrees Fahrenheit is mandatory for their seed and seedlings to germinate and grow well.
In a long growing season, you can plant cucumber seeds outdoors in the 5-gallon bucket, but in a short growing season, you have to act differently. In this case, the seeds’ germination indoors should be started three weeks before moving them outdoors. It would help to put the seed trays in a warm place like a refrigerator, oven, or water heater or utilize a heating mat.
Except for seed starting, you can buy seedlings from a local botany shop or nursery when you plant cucumbers to add a great vegetable to your container gardening arena.
– Type of Bucket
A raised bed for cucumber plants needs to be at least 18 inches deep, and if your bucket isn’t at least 16 inches deep and 12 inches wide, you cannot grow a cucumber plant as it has a deep root. A 5-gallon bucket is ideal if you are trying to grow cucumbers due to its perfect depth and width.
When you tend to choose an ideal five-gallon bucket and pierce a few pits at the base so excess water can drain. Then load the bucket with rich potting soil, keep it in a place where sunlight comes smoothly, and ensure the area is warm. Now it’s high time you planted your seeds into the bucket to harvest cucumbers.
The bucket needs enough drainage holes at the bottom, which will drain abundant water. Otherwise, the roots of your cucumber can experience root rot as they don’t like wet soil.
How To Successfully Grow Cucumber in Five-gallon Bucket?
To grow cucumbers in a five gallon bucket successfully, you can start by giving it the right support, deep watering it, and make sure you are fertilizing it too. In addition, it also has to do with providing the right support to the plant, lastly, watch out for the pests.
– Deep Watering
Cucumber plants need frequent, deep watering once a week to grow healthy. If the weather is too warm, you must water them every couple of days.
If the plants don’t receive adequate water with stable frequency, they can produce vegetables with distorted and lousy tastes due to a lack of moisture.
– Proper Fertilizing
To ensure your plants’ healthy growth, you must give a small dose of fertilizer every 10 to 14 days to your cucumber plants, as they don’t demand much fertilizer for maximum development and production. Liquid fertilizers are best for cucumber plants as they can be absorbed nicely through the roots and foliage.
– Be Cautious Regarding Pests
Just planting the cucumber seeds doesn’t promise full-grown cucumber; you need to monitor the seeds to protect them from pests. These would come to the bucket and they may even lay eggs and hatch their larvae.
There are different kinds of insects, including beetles, squash bugs, slugs, spider mites, snails, and other vegetable pests, which can be harmful when trying to harvest cucumbers. You must monitor for problems every morning, and after sending away the pests, the leaves should get a whole day to dry or relax.
– Away From Frost
Though cucumbers don’t like frost, they also don’t like too much temperature. So, the temperature of the bucket should never be more than 90 degrees Fahrenheit. If everything goes well, your cucumbers will be ripe between 55 and 65 days after sowing, and you must collect the cucumbers just after they initiate to ripe.
– Providing Support
You can use a trellis to support your vines and affix them to it. If you find some hardware store that sell trellis you can use that, or you can make yourself one, and all you need is a tomato cage and several wooden stakes.
Overturn the tomato cage to keep it in the potting soil and connect the top of the overturned cage to give it a structure of a teepee. Entwine the wooden poles through the leads of the cell and place them in potting soil deep.
If you are harvesting a bush variety of cucumber in the gallon bucket, you are free from the additional tension of providing support, as this type of cucumber doesn’t need backup.
However, the vining variety will require support as the vines need support to grow vertically without entangling or touching the ground. Besides, when you add support, it is more comfortable to prune and preserve the vines and harvest the cucumbers.
Make sure you are adding support while building the container because if you count support when seedlings are germinated, this can cause damage to the roots of the cucumber plant. You should also ensure to have at least two to three poles on different sides of the tomato cage to stabilize the cucumber plant’s support.
Conclusion
Growing vegetables is fun, and cucumber is one of the popular vegetables you must want to grow in your vegetable gardens. But if you are having an issue and don’t know how to grow cucumber in a small space, now you know how to harvest them in 5 gallon buckets after reading our article, and let’s summarize the facts you have read till now:
- Growing cucumber plants in the 5 gallon buckets is a splendid idea for gardeners who don’t own big spaces.
- Two cucumber plants thrive per 5 gallon bucket, whether vine-type or bush-type.
- The bucket must have a sound drainage system with holes at the base of it, and the cucumber seeds and seedlings require sunlight and a good mix of compost to grow healthy.
- You should keep cucumber plants in a place with a temperature of under 70 degrees Fahrenheit, and the plants grow fully within 55 to 65 days.
If you can provide good moisture, accurate temperature, and control pests, growing cucumbers in the 5 gallon buckets is easy. So, don’t worry that you don’t have a giant space; you can harvest your cucumbers in the tiny area of your veranda.
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