What Is Lemon Cucumber

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Try growing a lemon cucumber in your garden or greenhouse

I want to tell the readers of the magazine about an amazing plant from the Pumpkin family, which we successfully grow on our site. It's about lemon cucumber. Sometimes it is also called a "crystal apple" cucumber. This is the name of the variety of this unusual plant with spherical fruits, which first appeared in Europe, and then turned out to be here in Russia.

This vegetable amazes with its unusual appearance, and even more - with its wonderful features and properties. Judge for yourself: the fruits of the plant stimulate appetite, have a choleretic and diuretic effect, regulate the functioning of the stomach, liver, kidneys, improve metabolism, and help dissolve kidney stones. Fruits cleanse and rejuvenate the blood, remove toxins, bad cholesterol from the body, and improve memory. Due to its low calorie content and medicinal properties, it is recommended for metabolic disorders and obesity.

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What is this wonderful vegetable? They say that the lemon-cucumber, like all cucumbers, came to us from India (although there is also such a statement that its homeland is Mexico, therefore sometimes this cucumber is called Mexican). And it is probably no coincidence that this plant can grow and bear fruit even in very hot climatic conditions. According to experts, such cucumbers grow in arid deserts and waterless steppes.

This seeming paradox and real mystery of nature finds its scientific explanation. It turns out that the whole point is in the incredible ability of this plant to extract and accumulate water from a practically waterless environment. Plants can capture and retain life-giving moisture from the morning dew, which occurs even in the desert.

What is this cucumber variety famous for? First of all, it has an unusual shape that resembles a lemon or an apple. The fruits of this plant, as they ripen, change their color many times: young cucumbers have an emerald green color, then they turn white, and as they grow, the color changes to bright yellow.

And then it is already difficult to distinguish them by their appearance from the large fruits of real lemons, and in some plants the fruits look like a juicy ripe apple. These cucumbers at any stage of ripening have a unique taste and subtle aroma, which intensifies as they ripen.

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The plants of this cucumber are decorative, they grow well both in open ground, in greenhouses and hotbeds, and on windowsills in winter. Framing the window of a house or apartment with carved emerald green leaves, they amaze with their appearance and large, bright, juicy fruits.

When growing in a greenhouse in a vertical culture, it is not recommended to plant the plants closer than 1 m from each other in a row. This is due to the fact that it forms very long lashes, which will have to be thrown over the twine, directing them down.

The cucumber we grow is a variety, not a hybrid, so it is pollinated by insects. If you want to get full-fledged seeds from this plant, then this can be done only if it is isolated from the pollen of plants of other varieties of cucumbers. For this purpose, they will have to be manually pollinated.

The fruits of this cucumber contain a whole complex of vitamins and mineral salts, iodine, fiber, sugar. Lemon cucumber is used for making salads from fresh fruits and for canning. His pickled cucumbers with hot spices are especially good.

Here, in the Kuban, we grow it mainly in the open field. Usually we plant it in the ground with seedlings as soon as the threat of return frost disappears. Lemon cucumber can grow on any soil, but in order to get a large harvest, it is advisable to assign it a plot with loose, permeable fertile soil, sandy loam or light loam.

Soils of a different composition, heavier, need to be improved by adding compost, humus, sand, ash to them.

Take a sunny place for a lemon-cucumber on your plot, and an exotic vegetable with a familiar cucumber taste will appear on your table. It is propagated and grown, like ordinary cucumbers, by seeds.

Valery Brizhan, experienced gardener

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