Cucumber "Telegraph Improved"

Salad Cucumber "Telegraph Improved".
English classic: long, smooth, and flawless!
A mid-early (50-55 days) salad variety. The plant is vigorous, with a female flowering type.
An improved version of an heirloom variety that earned its popularity back in 1897. 
This variety is ideal for cultivation both in greenhouses and in open ground. 
The fruits are dark green, long (up to 40 cm), tender, juicy, sweet, absolutely without bitterness, with thin skin. The flesh is crisp, tender, and practically seedless. 
Value of the variety: high yield, excellent taste qualities, disease resistance.
Recommended for fresh consumption and preparing various salads.

* The best sprouted cucumber seeds for sowing are considered to be those where the sprout is half the length of the seed.
Sprouted seeds should only be placed in moist soil - they will die in dry soil. When growing cucumbers under film, it is not recommended to remove the film from the plants immediately.
In bright sun, plants should be accustomed to open air only for a few minutes at a time. They can be completely uncovered in cloudy weather. If the flowering of cucumbers is delayed, watering should be reduced.
For feeding cucumbers, you can mix solutions of mullein and chicken manure. At the beginning of plant vegetation, the mullein solution should predominate in the feeding, and later - the chicken manure solution.

Try a fairly simple but productive way of growing cucumbers.
Holes 30-35 cm deep are dug in the garden bed every 0.5 m, filled with manure, and sprinkled with soil on top. 5-6 seeds are sown in a circle in the prepared hole. After abundant watering, a polyethylene film is spread directly on the garden bed, which is pressed down at the edges with wooden blocks, bricks, etc. Small (10-15 cm long) cross-shaped cuts (vents) are made in the film over each hole. As a result, good conditions for seed germination are created under the film - high air temperature and humidity. When the cucumber sprouts begin to touch the film with their leaves, the cuts in the film must be expanded. The value of this method of cultivation is that the root system of cucumbers is constantly in warmth and favourable conditions are created for the plants. In the future, the entire above-ground part of the plant will be located on the film and bear fruit abundantly. The film is not removed from the beds until the end of the season. Plants are periodically watered and fed.
When harvesting, cucumbers should not be torn off, they must be cut with a knife. Cucumber stems are very brittle and sensitive. Tearing off the fruits damages them, and this can stop the development of the plant. When collecting cucumbers, you must also be careful not to step on the stems and crush them. Cucumbers should be cut in the middle of the stem (peduncle).
Adult vines should not be moved from place to place when collecting cucumbers, and especially not turned over from how they lie. As a rule, the leaves of the vines face the light with their surface; if they are turned downwards, then the leaves will try to take their former position to turn their "face" to the light, and this can weaken them to such an extent that they begin to turn yellow, their ovaries stop growing, and the vine becomes less fruitful or completely barren.
When collecting cucumbers, be sure to remove all deformed and overgrown fruits, as they delay the formation of healthy fruits.
Cucumbers should be collected not in the middle of the day, but early in the morning, when the garden bed is still moist from dew and the cucumbers are firm.

Cucumbers do not tolerate watering at the root well. 
Try the following original method of watering and feeding: miniature wells are arranged in the cucumber bed, placed a meter apart from each other. Metal beer cans with the bottom knocked out with a chisel are used to make them.

* To attract bees to bee-pollinated hybrids, plants can be sprayed with a weak sugar solution (1 teaspoon of sugar per 1 litre of water).
It is useful to sprinkle fresh loose fertile soil in a layer of 1-2 cm on the cucumber bed several times during the summer (without earthing up the plants), timing this work with organic feeding. It is very important when growing cucumbers in a greenhouse to maintain high air humidity in the heat. To do this, you can spray the paths and walls of the cucumber greenhouse with water.

It is convenient to grow cucumbers "on a spiral" in greenhouses.
With this method, cables are stretched under the roof of the greenhouse, on which spirals made of aluminum wire (8 mm in diameter) in a PVC sheath hang. Such spirals are easily removed from the cable and put on it using hooks. After planting cucumber seedlings in the greenhouse, the spiral is removed from the cable, carefully wound onto the plants so that the stem of each cucumber is inside the spiral, then the spiral is hung on the cable. Throughout the season, it is necessary to ensure that the plants do not come out of the spiral and tuck the top into the spiral in a timely manner. This method of support can also be used on tomatoes. An aluminum wire spiral is much more reliable than a rope.

When growing cucumbers, remember that excessive density of crops can lead to mutual oppression of plants, delayed growth and development, late fruiting, reduced yield, and deterioration in fruit quality. Therefore, after the appearance of the first true leaf on the plants, they are thinned out.
When thinning, do not pull out the plants, but rather cut them off at soil level. After thinning, cucumber plants are sprinkled with peat or sawdust in a layer of 2-3 cm. If you are late with thinning, the plants stretch out, give late side shoots, and the yield decreases.
It is preferable to loosen the beds of grown cucumbers with a fork, which is stuck between rows of plants and immediately pulled out without making any sideways movements. This method of loosening has a positive effect on the development of the cucumber root system located in the upper soil layer.
Before flowering, it is better to water cucumbers in the morning, and during flowering and fruiting - in the evening. On a cloudy day, the watering rate is slightly reduced, but the soil should not be dry.
To increase the yield and rapid ripening of young cucumbers, the main vines of the plant should be laid out on empty places, pinned to the ground with forked sticks, and sprinkled with soil.
To form the root system and strengthen plant nutrition, thin shoots that do not have ovaries need to be cut off, and side shoots pinched to a length of 35-40 cm.