Extension Service Garden Hints

Cucumbers bitter? Why and what to do about it

What makes cucumbers bitter? Gardeners puzzle over this every summer.

The bitter taste of cucumbers comes from a natural organic compound called cucurbitacin, explained Oregon State University vegetable breeder Jim Myers.

Wild cucumbers contain relatively high concentrations of cucurbitacin, causing them to be highly bitter. Their domestic cousins, the cucumbers we grow in the garden and buy in the store, tend to have less, but varying, amounts of the bitter compound.

Bitter cucurbitacin is found mainly in the vegetative parts of the plant like leaves, stems and roots. On occasion and to a lesser degree, it spreads to the fruiting structure, said Myers. It doesn't accumulate evenly within each cuke and can vary in concentration from one fruit to another.

When harvesting your slicing cucumbers, take note: the bitter compound is likely to be more concentrated in the stem end than in the blossom end of the cucumber fruit. It is also more prevalent in the peel and in the light green area just beneath the peel. It is less likely to be found in the deeper interior of the fruit.

James M. Stephens, vegetable crops professor at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, has come up with a method of peeling a cucumber to avoid serving bitter-tasting cukes.

Start peeling at the blossom end of the fruit. Slice away one strip of the green peel toward the stem end and stop about one inch from the stem.

Then wash off the knife blade, then repeat peeling from blossom to stem end until the fruit is peeled. Rinse the knife again and cut up the cucumber as needed.

Vegetable scientists have several explanations about why some cucumbers become more bitter than others, including:

-Cucumbers picked from vines growing under some type of stress, such as lack of water, are often somewhat bitter.

-Misshapen fruits are more likely to be bitter than are the well-shaped fruits.

-There are more complaints about bitter cucumbers grown during cool periods than during warm times.

-Some think that varying levels of fertilizers, plant spacing and irrigation frequency may also affect bitterness.

Bitterness seems to vary with the type of cucumber grown. But you can expect some degree of bitterness from time to time in most any variety of cucumber commonly grown, said Myers.

By: Carol Savonen
Source: Jim Myers

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