Saturday Spotlight – Summer Dance Cucumbers

I pulled out most of my cucumber plants yesterday.  I left in two and both were Summer Dance.  They seem to be more resistant to Powdery Mildew than Catalina Pickling, Lebanese and the Lemon varieties that I also grew this year.  This is just one of the attractions of this really lovely variety.

Although they were not the most prolific variety I grew this year (that honour must surely go to the ridiculously abundant Lemon) they were definitely worth devoting garden space to.  As this was my first year growing them my impressions of them are entirely based on this (rather warm) years experiences.   Summer Dance were amongst the first plants to produce this year and they will also be the last.  Although they didn’t produce large volumes at any given time they have averaged 2 or 3 good quality fruit per plant per week for the past 3 months.

The fruit are long (about 25-30cm) green and really, really crisp.

They have thick flesh without too many seeds and are lovely to eat fresh.  I suspect they would make lovely pickles too but as I mixed all my varieties when I made them this year I’m not sure which is which.

I sowed the seed in late August and they commenced fruiting at the end of December.  I grew two plants and both were in fairly sheltered positions nestled behind other plants.  The part of the bed they are in gets about 6-7 hours sun per day but the plants were shaded by other crops.  I’m not sure if they would have produced more had they got more sun or produced less without the protection offered by other crops.

I will definitely grow this variety again next year.

I have created a page (above, just below the header) with an Index of all the Spotlights to date.   I will add links to any new posts below and in next weeks post as well as ensuring they appear in the Index.  Let me know if you write one by leaving a comment.

New Spotlights last week were:

Baby Blue Jade Corn – Kebun Malay-Kadazan Girls

Giant Winter Spinach – Our Happy Acres

Prosperosa Eggplant – Beks Backyard

And new for this week:

Spotted Trout Lettuce – Our Happy Acres

Greek Gigante Beans – From Seed to Table

Tomatoes – City Garden, Country Garden