English Telegraph Experiment – One More!

Everyone, including myself, will inevitably makes some mistakes. The mistake that I happened to make with my recent English Telegraph experiment was that I left seed of one seed supplier out. The seed supplier in question was Stokes Seed, from Canada. Unfortunately, Stokes seed is unwilling to sell to anyone outside of Canada, so I had to work with some Canadian friends of mine to acquire the variety.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the greenhouse was full, I started a few more seeds in some soil blocks and transplanted them into a friend’s plot that I refer to as “the fertile garden”. The plants did alright, but struggled for most of the season due to overhead watering.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I was finally able to harvest the mature fruit, they were seedless. It looks like finding an English Telegraph cucumber variety that will work for me will take quite a while.

English Telegraph Cucumber Experiment

One extremely popular cucumber that is very difficult to find is called the English Telegraph or sometimes also called the “Telegraph Improved”. Some of the drawbacks of this variety as a grower include the fact that it does not care much for hot weather and is extremely parthenocarpic. Because the female flowers set fruit without pollination, this makes the English Telegraph very difficult for saving seed. When I say difficult, I mean that some fruit will go from blossom to maturity without the flower opening up. This makes pollination practically impossible. Even with those flowers that do blossom, 20 seeds per fruit is an extremely high count and average counts for this variety average about 5 seeds per fruit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With such an abysmal outlook on the harvest, why would anyone want to try saving seeds of this variety? Because it can be grown in a greenhouse, has nice long cucumbers and, once established, is generally easy to care for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over time I have had difficulty sourcing seed for this variety, so I decided to try growing some seed for myself. In my greenhouse, I began by trying to grow some seed from three different sources including the GRIN government repository, Some from Seed Savers Exchange and few leftover seeds from the old Sustainable Seed Company.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The GRIN repository variety did alright, but over time it became very apparent that the variety was not true-to-type. The cucumbers did grow, but they were a bit warty and short – nothing like the regular English Telegraph. However, they were parthenocarpic – producing fruit without pollination. After a little while, I tossed the plants. This variety failed the true-to-type requirement of my experiment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Old Sustainable Seed Company seed produced great looking straight cucumbers that – more often than not – looked just like the English Telegraph cucumber should. However, the problem was that once harvested the fruit had no seed in them. To add insult to injury, I had absolutely no seed left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, the Seed Savers Exchange English Telegraph was true-to-type, a little curved, slightly bitter and produced some seed – but none was viable. At least with the Seed Savers variety, I had a jumping off point for future grow-outs. Finally, I have the opportunity to try growing more English Telegraph cucumbers in the future.

The Monika Cucumber

One of the most impressive cucumber varieties that I grew in my parthenocarpic cucumber greenhouse trial was the Monika. Back when I tried them, the vines were productive and completely gynoecious – producing only female flowers that resisted changing color or aborting the female flowers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Due to their success in the greenhouse, I figured it might be interesting growing the Monika out for seed in the fertile garden. Similar to growing in the greenhouse, the vines were highly productive – at least with female flowers. While not every female flower set fruit, the majority did – and those that didn’t primarily didn’t because the other fruit set was so heavy. Despite how great the production was, there was no male flower to be seen. Productive seedless cucumbers are a boon to growers, but a significant bane to seed growers. Without pollen from male flowers, all the female fruit will produce either seedless fruit or fruit with seed that is not viable. The male flowers probably did not appear anywhere on the vines until 3-4 weeks after the female flowers. In face, it took until half way through a second harvest until a few male flowers began to develop. While I am not in favor of genetic engineering or messing with nature too much, it would have been really nice to have some kind of hormone that I could spray on the plants to increase the incidence of male flowers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once male flowers finally began developing, there were plenty of fruit on the vine that needed to be harvested. With all the abundance of Monika cucumbers, I decided to try my hand at pickling. Pickling is definitely not my forté and the mix I used to prepare the pickles made a brine that did not suit myself or my family. We ended up getting rid of the pickles after consuming only a jar or so.

  

 

 

After the pickling failure – failing by using a store-bought pre-made recipe – I continued caring for the remaining Monika cucumbers. They were so productive. Honestly, Monika was definitely a favorite to grow for fruit – but not for seed. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyone who has grown parthenocarpic cucumber varieties knows that they require a large population and many male flowers in order to ensure proper pollination. Even then, harvests of varieties like English Telegraph can be dismal. My harvest was more than the ten gallons pictured, but it was enough. In the end, I was satisfied to collect harvest enough seed from the fruit to last me into the next season.