Don't Bother Buying This One Vegetable As A Seedling

Purchasing seedlings from a local nursery can be a great way to fill your vegetable garden with healthy plants if you don't have the space or supplies for indoor seed starting. Not all vegetables grow well as transplants, though. Plants with long taproots or delicate roots in particular are prone to succumbing to transplant shock if they aren't direct-sown. One plant you're almost always better off starting outdoors from seed rather than indoors or buying as a seedling is the classic garden plant, the cucumber.

Cucumbers can be transplanted, but only when they are very young. And even then, they require careful handling. The ideal time to transplant cucumbers into their permanent location, if they are being started indoors, is when they have only three true leaves. Most cucumber plants at nurseries are quite a bit past this stage. Luckily, cukes thrive and grow quickly when direct-seeded into a garden bed. This is how farmers tend to grow cucumbers as well. By direct seeding your cucumber, you don't have to worry about damaging its fragile root system or brittle vines. Growing from seed also allows you to pick from a far wider range of different kinds of cucumbers than you'd be able to find if you opted for purchasing live plants. 

Cucumbers aren't frost-tolerant and need soil temperatures of at least 70 degrees Fahrenheit. So if you're direct sowing them, you'll need to either wait until after your last frost date or grow them under a hoop house or other structure to help keep them warm on cold spring nights. Fortunately, since they only take around two months to mature, most gardeners should have plenty of time to get a good crop from their cucumber plants, even if they have to wait until well into May to start planting. If you get a late start on your garden or have a particularly short summer, consider growing an especially fast-maturing cultivar like 'Bushy Cucumber', which can be ready to harvest in as little as 45 days. They also have a manageable vine size of only 5 feet.

When you're ready to start growing your healthy cucumbers, make sure to find them the right spot since they will be difficult to transplant if you discover their location isn't working well. Cucumbers thrive in moist but well-draining soil, so consider amending your garden with compost to improve drainage if necessary. Cucumbers also need full sun to grow well and should ideally receive at least eight hours of direct sunlight a day. Additionally, because cucumbers grow on vines, they need trellises to climb if you don't want them to trail along the ground. Luckily, you can often build a garden trellis without buying any new materials.