Why are the cucumbers inside empty and what to do about it
There are understandable reasons why the cucumbers are empty inside. If such a misfortune happened to the crop, next season you need to work on mistakes. Here are the main areas to look for when growing cucumbers:
- microclimate;
- watering;
- soil quality and balanced nutrition;
- varietal characteristics and timely harvesting;
- disease.
We will deal with each item separately in order to understand our mistakes and not repeat them again. The listed factors affect the quality of the fruit when growing cucumbers both in the open field and in the greenhouse.
Harvesting and variety characteristics
Summer residents, who rarely come to their country house, collect hollow cucumbers more often than others. During the peak of fruiting, the collection of young cucumbers should be carried out every day or at least every other day. Harvesting once every 5 - 7 days leads to the fact that the greens are overripe and voids appear in them.
Careful selection of seeds for planting can solve the problem. Hybrids should be preferred. On the package with seeds, next to the name should be the designation F1. Most of the newer hybrids do not form voids from the inside of the fruit. If you carefully read the description of the variety printed on the package, you can find seeds with the right characteristics for growing in a greenhouse and in the open field.
When choosing seeds, another characteristic is important - the purpose of use. By the value of this characteristic, all varieties (hybrids) are divided into 3 groups:
- salad;
- universal;
- canned food.
Less often, canned cucumbers are hollow, followed by universal ones, most often greenhouse varieties of salad purposes outgrow and become empty.
Microclimate
Microclimate can be talked about when growing crops in a greenhouse. In the open field, humidity and air temperature are determined by the weather. The large difference between night and day temperatures in August leads to the formation of cavities in the fruits.
In protected ground, this problem is not so urgent; in the garden, cucumber beds need to be covered with covering material at night to maintain the optimal temperature at night.
Covering will improve fruit formation, as cucumbers grow at night and the temperature required for plants to grow must be above 20 ° C.
Watering
A very important condition for the quality of the fruit is proper watering. Insufficient watering negatively affects the quality of the cucumber pulp. Especially the lack of moisture affects in hot weather. Abundant watering after a prolonged period of drought deteriorates the commodity performance.
This problem can be solved in several ways:
- organize an automatic drip irrigation system;
- cover the soil under the bushes with a layer of mulch (15 cm);
- water with a watering can, but regularly, preventing the top layer from drying out.
Mulching the soil not only allows you to retain moisture, but also helps to improve the structure of the soil, which directly affects the nutrition of plants, and therefore, the quality of the fruits and the density of their pulp. When caring for a crop, you need to remember that soil moisture must be constant and not fall below 75%.
Soil quality and balanced nutrition
With the inept use of organic and mineral fertilizers, you can get a poor quality crop.
Cucumbers with voids inside are poor raw materials for preparations and not the best product for making salads.
If the pulp of fresh cucumbers has a loose structure, you need to analyze the feeding scheme. Perhaps, by applying fertilizers to the soil, the balance between nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium was disturbed. Cavities inside the fruit appear when there is an excess of nitrogen. An imbalance often occurs with the simultaneous introduction of organic matter (manure) and urea.
To avoid such a problem, when preparing the soil in the spring (autumn), apply humus and mineral fertilizers under the cucumbers at the rate. The rate is determined based on the structure of the soil: for different types of soils (loamy, clayey, sandy loam) need their own proportions of fertilizers.
For a balanced nutrition of cucumbers, it is better to use complex mineral fertilizers. The packaging always indicates the ratio of the main nutrients. It must be remembered that during the formation of ovaries and fruits, the plant needs more potassium, during flowering it needs phosphorus, and nitrogen is needed in the initial period, when the green mass is actively growing.
Diseases
Cucumber is a culture sensitive to temperature fluctuations. The stress for her is an increase in temperature above 30 ° C and a decrease below 10 ° C. During stress, immunity decreases, and the risk of infectious diseases increases.
Defects can form in cucumbers if the bush is infected with a virus. Crop losses from viral diseases are significant. For example, viral necrosis reduces yields by 20%, or even 50%.
You can avoid the deformity of fruits and death of plants from viral diseases if you follow certain rules:
- crop rotation;
- healthy seeds;
- varieties resistant to viruses;
- soil treatment before planting with fungicides;
- balanced nutrition and watering.
It is possible to increase the immunity of plants in the greenhouse (soil) with the help of growth regulators, which should be in the arsenal of every summer resident. Applying them in the required proportions, you can get a full harvest even in bad weather conditions.
Eliminating the reasons why the cucumbers are empty inside will help improve the quality of the crop. In winter, the jars will not contain wrinkled, soft fruits, but firm and crunchy cucumbers.
