Indoor Cucumber plant question

[phkc070408]

I started a cucumber plant in my basement in December. It was an experiment to see how I would do with them indoors. I brought the plant out of the basement, take it outside during the day, and bring it in the garage overnight.

It has blossoms and obviously needs some manual pollination, however the flowers aren't opening up. Is it OK to stick my paintbrush inside the closed flower, or do I need to somehow force the blossom to open?

 

[AndyGardens]

I started a cucumber plant in my basement in December. It was an experiment to see how I would do with them indoors. I brought the plant out of the basement, take it outside during the day, and bring it in the garage overnight.

It has blossoms and obviously needs some manual pollination, however the flowers aren't opening up. Is it OK to stick my paintbrush inside the closed flower, or do I need to somehow force the blossom to open?

No, I don't think you can force open the flowers for pollination. If they are not open, it means they are not ready for pollination yet. Usually, when plants are experiencing stress of some kind, that could cause them to not flower properly, which is likely the case here. My guess is that either it is not getting enough light, maybe its roots are too confined, or some combination. It could also have to do with the fluctuations in temperature between inside and outside. One thing you could try is lightly misting the flowers in the morning to see if they will open up. Sometimes that does the trick.

 

[phkc070408]

OK. Thanks for the advice. I thought by putting it in the garage overnight I was minimizing the temp variation.

The plant is still relatively small, only about 4-6 inches tall when I carefully hold it up, but there are about 8 flowers on it.

Right now there are 2 plants in the pot. I’ll remove the weaker one to give the stronger one more room to grow.