Supporting Cucumbers in the Home Garden

Left on the ground, a vining cucumber sprawls 4 to 6 feet or more. Grown up a string or trellis, the same plant needs about a foot of bed. Vertical growing suits small gardens, raised beds and containers, and it brings a few other benefits:

Drier leaves. Better airflow and faster drying after rain slow powdery mildew and other leaf diseases.
Cleaner, straighter fruit. Cucumbers hang free instead of lying on damp soil, so there is less rot, less slug damage and no yellow belly where the fruit touched the ground. Long types grow straight.
Easier picking. The fruit hangs at eye level, so you miss fewer oversized cucumbers, and leaving those on the vine slows production.

Video: growing cucumbers up strings

Setting up the support

Pick a vining variety. Bush cucumbers stay short and don't need support. Most slicers and picklers vine, including 'Marketmore', 'Straight Eight' and lemon cucumbers, and long English and Persian types are especially well suited to strings. See cucumber types.

Prepare the bed. Cucumbers want full sun and loose, well-drained soil with a pH of 6.0 to 7.0. Work in compost before planting.

Build the frame before you plant. A mature cucumber vine loaded with fruit is heavy, so the frame needs to be stronger than it looks at planting time. Two common setups:

Overhead wire or bar. Set a sturdy post at each end of the bed and run a taut wire, pipe or strong rope between them, 5 to 7 feet high. Hang one string per plant from it.
A-frame. Two trellis panels or frames leaned together, with strings or netting on both sides. This works well in raised beds and lets you plant a row on each side.

Use a strong, rot-resistant twine such as polypropylene garden twine. Natural jute is fine for one season but can stretch or rot before the end of a long summer. Cattle panels and nylon trellis netting work too, and the vines climb them with less training.

Plant at the base of each string. Sow seed or set transplants 12 inches apart, one plant per string, after your last frost date once the soil is at least 60°F (70°F or warmer is better).

Training the vines

Anchor the string. Tie the bottom of the string to a stake or ground staple next to the plant. You can also tie a loose, non-slipping loop around the base of the stem, but leave room for the stem to thicken. Keep the string taut and vertical.
Get the vine started. When the plant is 8 to 12 inches tall, twist the top of the main stem gently around the string, always in the same direction. The tendrils will grab on after that, but check every few days for the first couple of weeks and wind in any stray growth.
Prune lightly. Pruning is optional with ordinary garden cucumbers. If you are growing one stem per string, pinch off side shoots and flowers from the lowest four or five leaf joints so the plant builds roots and vine before it starts fruiting. Above that, let side shoots grow, or pinch each one after its first fruit and a leaf or two to keep the plant compact. Remove yellowing lower leaves as the plant grows to improve airflow.
Handle the top. When the vine reaches the wire, let it hang back down over the top, or pinch the growing tip.

Care

Water: cucumbers on strings dry out faster than plants on the ground. Give them about 1 inch a week, more in hot weather and while fruiting, applied at the base of the plants. A soaker hose along the row is ideal. Drought stress is the main cause of bitter fruit.
Feeding: mix compost into the bed at planting and side-dress with compost or a balanced fertilizer when the vines start to climb. Too much nitrogen gives leaves instead of fruit.
Pests: cucumber beetles are the main threat, and they spread bacterial wilt. Protect young plants with row cover until they flower. Insecticidal soap and neem do little against these hard-bodied beetles. Spray aphid colonies with a strong jet of water or insecticidal soap.

Harvesting

Pick slicing cucumbers at 6 to 8 inches and pickling types at 2 to 6 inches, while they are firm and evenly green. Cut them off with scissors rather than pulling, which can tear the vine off its string. Check every day or two in warm weather. Regular picking keeps the plant setting new fruit. For problems with leaves and fruit, see What's going on with my cucumber plants?