What causes crooked cucumbers and how should you deal with it?

Cucumber is one of our common vegetables, and whether you are a grower or a consumer, everyone prefers those that are well-proportioned, straight and long. If cucumbers grow crooked during cultivation, it hurts their commercial value, leads to lower returns, and gives people a real headache. So what causes cucumbers to grow crooked? How should you deal with it? Let's take a look.

I. Physiological causes

1. Insufficient fertility

While cucumbers are growing, if the plant cannot supply enough nutrients, crooked or deformed cucumbers are very likely to appear. So when a plant is carrying large fruit, its demand for nutrients is enormous, and a severe shortage of nutrients leads to poor growth, affecting both yield and quality.

2. Poor temperature

The suitable growing temperature for cucumbers is 10-32 degrees. When growing in a greenhouse, if the daytime temperature exceeds 35 degrees while the nighttime temperature is relatively low, the large day-night temperature difference will affect the cucumber's photosynthesis, causing it to grow crooked.

3. Insufficient light

Light is also one of the causes of crooked cucumbers. The length of light exposure is related to the plant's photosynthesis, making the synthesis of nutrients in the plant slower, so it cannot supply enough nutrients for its growth and development, leading to problems at every stage of cucumber growth and causing crooked growth.

3. Improper watering

Cucumbers need a lot of water during growth, but only at the seedling stage and in the later stage of cucumber growth; during the flowering period and just after fruit set, watering is not advisable, otherwise the fruit will start to swell and become crooked.

II. Physical causes

Cucumber is a vine-type vegetable. During cultivation it needs trellising and vine training to grow vigorously and to improve yield and quality. But when trellising, if the fruit is blocked by ropes, trellis forks and the like, it will grow deformed and crooked. In addition, if a cucumber touches or rests against the ground while growing, the cramped space will cause it to grow crooked rather than straight, forming a ground cucumber.

III. Solutions

For the crookedness caused by physiological and physical causes, preventive measures should be taken: water and fertilize reasonably and scientifically, control temperature and light during growth, minimize cucumber crookedness, and promptly remove any ground cucumbers. When crooked cucumbers do appear, remedial measures should be taken. If it is a young cucumber with only mild crookedness, you can hang a weight from the bottom to straighten it; you can also apply a growth regulator, smearing gibberellin on the inner curved surface of the crooked cucumber, and after a few days the crooked cucumber will straighten out. You can also take preventive measures early on, such as appropriately increasing planting density and reducing per-plant yield, promptly thinning flowers and fruit so the leaves age more, reducing the occurrence of crooked cucumbers; you can also regularly spray borax and monopotassium phosphate solution to prevent crooked or deformed cucumbers.

The above are the causes of crooked cucumbers and the solutions. We hope it helps you. If you want to learn more about cucumber cultivation, please stay tuned to us.