The Bucket Trick To Grow Hassle-Free Cucumbers In Your Garden

Cucumbers — technically the berries of the cucumber vine — are the quintessentially cool star in many refreshing, summery dishes like cucumber umeboshi salad with cashew crunch or spicy scallop tartare in cucumber cups.

Sure, you can buy cucumbers at the grocery store — especially if you have a handy cheat sheet on them — but it's also simple to grow them yourself in a five-gallon plastic bucket from a home improvement store. Drill some holes in the bottom for drainage, fill it with potting mix, and add some compost or organic fertilizer. Wait until one or two weeks after the last spring frost, and then buy one cucumber plant, which is actually separate seedlings in one container that you should split up, and plant them in the bucket. Cucumber plants need air flow, so be sure not to crowd the plants. You can fit about three plants in a five-gallon bucket, spacing them out evenly.

Find something the plant can climb on; you can buy a cucumber trellis or use anything sturdy that the vines can cling to. You can even use bamboo poles to create a space for the plants to grow vertically if you have some twine for tying handy. 

Place the bucket in full sun outside, fertilize the plants, water the soil every few days, and voilà! You should have cucumbers within a couple of months. 

Different kinds of cucumbers have different ways to shine. Of course, there are Kirby cucumbers for pickling, English cucumbers for sandwiches, and bright yellow lemon cucumbers for salads. 

But if you want to branch out, try some unexpected cucumber concoctions. Try baking them with butter and onions at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for an hour — a method Julia Child loved. A great tip for using cucumbers is to get them to expel excess water before putting them in salads or on sandwiches. You can use a simple mix of salt and sugar to keep cucumbers from getting soggy, while retaining their delightful zest.

Shake up some salsa by replacing tomatoes with cucumbers, and adding lime, chili flakes, salt, and red onion. Experiment with savory yogurt bowls, pairing roasted and spiced chickpeas with a salad of cucumber, melon, mint, avocado, and radish atop unsweetened thick Greek yogurt.

Cucumbers also add zing to cocktails. Try something more innovative than a traditional Pimm's cup. Jazz up a vodka martini with vermouth and cucumber slices. Reinvent a passion fruit caipirinha with cucumber, jalapeño, Cachaça, lime, and sugar. Put a twist on a mezcal paloma by adding cucumber and gentian liqueur.

You can even use them to set apart a sharbat — a traditional Persian cordial made with sekanjabin, a syrup made with vinegar and honey, and often flavored with mint. Simply grate in some freshly grown cucumber, straight from your garden. With all of these creative uses, you'll never run out of ideas for the fruit you harvest from your cucumber bucket.