Description

Cucumber Quebec Green
Cucumis sativus

Tasty field cucumber, never bitter, productive and hardy. Harvest between 10 and 20 cm long. It is also excellent for marinades. A cross made by agronomist Roger Doucet in 1970 to develop a variety resistant to cucumber mosaic virus. The PGRC (Plant Gene Resources of Canada) obtained the seeds from Roger Doucet himself in 1977. 65 days to maturity.

Full sun. Well-drained, rich soil. Direct sowing after the last frost or indoor sowing 2 to 5 weeks before. Protect young plants from insects at the beggining of the season. 1.5 cm deep. 40 cm between plants.

Germination: 92% in November 2024
Ecological seeds produced at Catherine’s Ornamental Garden.

Note
Agronomic research archives, Ministry of Agriculture and Colonization (in French):
1970-71
1971-72
1973-74

In October 2011, Michel from Potagers d’antan published a research notice concerning a cucumber variety developed in Quebec in the ’70s, cited as promising in the 1974 ANNUAL REPORT OF COOPERATIVE REGIONAL PROJECTS. Searching for other things in the catalog of Canada’s National Gene Bank in the winter of 2022, we stumbled across it a little by chance under breeding number CN 33132. We had the seeds in our hands a month later.

We were a bit disappointed during the season when we realized that 3 plants out of the 45 seeds we planted gave cucumbers that were different from all the others. Especially when they told us, at the Gene Bank, that they didn’t have any other batches that could be purer.

Luckily, the plants weren’t all next to each other like we usually do. They were scattered here and there, among other plants, in 2 different gardens. We saved the seeds of the identical plants furthest away from the three intruders, hoping that no cross-breeding had occurred, and replanted them in 2023 in our test garden. When we saw that all the plants were now uniform, we thought we’d take a chance and put it back into production. Which we did in 2024. We’re pretty happy, the plants were still all the same.

We ate a lot of these cucumbers, but took hardly any photos. We’ll have to remedy that in 2025.