The “One-Plant” Cucumber Method: Huge Greenhouse Yields with No Pruning

Good morning, it’s chilly, cold, and damp today. But they promise a warm-up by Wednesday.

Anna, I admire your cucumbers so much. Tell me in detail again, please: how, what, and when exactly do you do things to get such a harvest?

Lyudmila, hi! I do everything based on Smorchkova’s method (Note: Yulia Smorchkova is a popular Russian organic gardener). She harvests cucumbers from a single bush all the way until October in her greenhouse. And she plants just 1 bush across the entire width of the greenhouse!

Now, she claims that if you start a cucumber seed too early indoors, the seedling “ages” quickly before planting out. I completely disagree with her there. She sows her cucumbers in mid-April and plants them out when they are tiny. But I sow my seeds indoors around March 17th. By transplanting time, I plant a long, leggy, stretched-out vine about 50 cm (20 inches) long. It looks quite spindly because cucumbers grow poorly for me indoors, even under grow lights—I don’t know what the heck they are missing. But I really want to eat early cucumbers by late May, not in late June like her.

I transplant them into the greenhouse when the weather warms up and the soil is heated, usually in late April as usual. But I plant them slightly above ground level (on a mound). I dig the planting holes in advance, just as you taught me, so the soil down in the hole warms up faster, and then I backfill around the roots with this pre-warmed soil.

The main trick of the “Smorchkova” cucumber method is total freedom for the plant—absolutely no pinching or pruning! It grows however it wants; you just gently guide the vines onto the trellis in the early stages.

Good soil is a given, naturally. I always plant them in the exact same spot—one end of the greenhouse is dedicated entirely to cucumbers. The soil there is like pure fluff, because for years I have been heavily mulching it all summer with fresh grass clippings. The earthworms never sleep; they constantly process this grass into rich worm castings (vermicompost). I haven’t even added any new grass lately, and there is just a thin layer of it left underneath, teeming with worms. Crucial tip: you must water directly over the entire surface of the mulch, soaking it gently by hand if it has dried out, to keep it moist.

This method doesn’t just save seeds. People think that if they cram 10 cucumbers into a greenhouse, planting them every 30 cm (12 inches), they will get a massive harvest… but in reality, the cucumbers have nowhere to grow. You constantly have to pinch them, prune them, and aggressively manage them. They never reach their full potential, and they just create endless work for the gardener.

To be fair, I do plant 3 seeds/seedlings initially, just in case one dies. And if all goes well, I let all three grow for a bit—after all, one bush doesn’t yield quite enough for those very first early spring salads. But once they really gain strength and there are plenty of cucumbers, I pull out the two on the sides, leaving only the one central plant. Because by then, there are just too many vines and they crowd each other out. Don’t worry about damaging the vines of the central plant when you rip out the side ones—they regenerate and branch out very quickly.

Here are photos of my bush on May 9th, and then on May 24th.