Prince High Yield Cucumber Seeds

Prince High Yield Cucumber is a vigorous slicing variety bred for one thing above all: a long, generous run of fruit. The vines are strong and keep flowering and setting through the season, while the cucumbers themselves are smooth-skinned, uniformly dark green and pleasantly crisp, with the clean, cooling flavour that makes cucumber the star of a summer salad. It is just as at home sliced fresh as it is pickled, and its even shape and reliable cropping set it apart from lighter-yielding garden types.

Planting

Cucumber is a warm-season, frost-tender crop, so sow only after all danger of frost has passed and the soil has warmed. Aim for a soil temperature of about 16-21 C, since seed will not germinate in cold ground and rots below roughly 10-13 C. Sow the seed directly about 1.3-2.5 cm deep in a position that gets full sun. At soil temperatures of around 18-29 C the seedlings emerge in about 5-10 days. In Egypt the open field is worked in two main seasons: a summer (spring) crop sown from about 20 February to 7 April, and a fall crop sown from about 10 to 20 July, while protected plastic-house crops go in from about 1 September to 7 October. The July sowing matures into the cooler autumn and avoids the harshest midsummer heat at fruit-set, which is preferable because extreme heat and drought stress cause bitter, misshapen fruit. The deep cold of December and January is unsuitable for open-field cucumber and is reserved for greenhouse or tunnel production. Sow a little extra seed, then thin after the seedlings develop their first two true leaves; in Egyptian field practice seeds are sown in hills and thinned to two plants about two weeks after sowing. Space plants roughly 20-30 cm apart in the row, with rows for these vining types set widely, about 1 to 1.5 m apart. If you prefer a head start, cucumbers can be raised indoors no more than about 3-4 weeks before field planting, kept above roughly 21 C by day and 16 C by night; handle the root balls gently at transplanting, as cucumbers dislike root disturbance, and transplants then mature about 10-14 days earlier than direct-seeded plants.

Fertilizing

Work the ground before planting by incorporating an all-purpose 10-10-10 fertilizer at about 0.5-1 kg per 9 square metres, or a preplant 5-10-10 at around 1.4 kg per 9 square metres. Once the runners develop and before flowering, give the plants a nitrogen boost, then feed again as the crop carries fruit: a practical approach is to side-dress with about 0.45 kg of 33-0-0 per 9 square metres roughly one week after blooming begins and again three weeks later, placed about 15 cm from the base of the plant. Go easy on nitrogen overall, because an excess pushes the vines into heavy leaf and vine growth, delays flowering and fruit set, and ultimately cuts your yield. A split feeding programme of a preplant dose followed by timed side-dressings keeps Prince cropping steadily rather than running to foliage.

Care

Keep the plants in full sun and the water steady: cucumbers need about 25-50 mm of water per week from rain or irrigation, and moisture is most critical during flowering and fruiting. Watering with drip or soaker hoses keeps the foliage dry and helps hold disease at bay. Watch for striped and spotted cucumber beetles (the striped beetle also spreads bacterial wilt), aphids, spider mites in hot dry spells, and pickleworms; floating row covers, pyrethrin, or neem-based azadirachtin help with the beetles, but remove any covers once flowering starts so the bees can pollinate. The main diseases to guard against are bacterial wilt, powdery and downy mildew, anthracnose, angular leaf spot and cucurbit viruses, all best managed through crop rotation, resistant varieties and keeping the leaves dry. Fruit is ready roughly 5-7 days after flowering and the crop comes in about 50-70 days from planting. Pick the cucumbers young, firm and uniformly green, before the seeds harden and the skin yellows, harvesting slicing fruit at around 15-20 cm long and 4-5 cm across. Picking every 2-3 days, or daily at the peak, keeps these productive vines setting more fruit.