You're listening to the Beginners Garden podcast. I'm Jill McShehehehe with Journey Withjil.net,

and my goal is to give beginning gardeners the tools they need to grow a rewarding, productive garden. Hi guys, welcome to episode 15 of the Beginners Garden podcast.

In today's episode, we're going to talk cucumbers.

They seem simple enough to grow, but that first year, I found

myself asking so many questions I hadn't anticipated. The main one was which type to plant,

depending on whether I wanted to eat them fresh or preserve them. And fortunately, that's something I

found out after I had planted my first

planting. Then once I started harvesting, they were inedibly bitter. Have you ever had that experience

before? Thankfully, I learned a lot in that first season, and I'm going to pass what I learned

the hard way onto you. Cucumbers really are not that hard to grow, and

I'm going to make it simple for you today. We're going to talk about everything from planting

to harvesting and everything in between. If you want cucumbers this season, whether just a few in

your salad or you want to freeze or pickle them or make sweet pickle relish

that your family members will beg for, you are in for a treat today. First we're going to talk about

which type to plant. As I mentioned, I just thought a cucumber is a cucumber, so I planted the

seeds that I had and I expected to eat them fresh and pickle them and do everything

with the same type of cucumber.

But unfortunately, I realized there are different types of cucumbers.

You've got slicing cucumbers, pickling cucumbers, and burpless cucumbers.

So what's the difference?

Your slicing cucumbers are gonna be your salad

cucumbers. They're the ones that you think of when you think of eating them fresh in a salad

...