the CUCUMBER: a genus of plants belonging to the monocota class; and in the natural method ranking under the 34th order, Cucurbitaceae. See Botany Index.

Four varieties of the cucumis sativus are chiefly cultivated in this country. They are raised at three different seasons of the year: 1. on hot-beds, for early fruit; 2. under bell or hand-glasses, for the middle crop; 3. on the common ground, which is for a late crop, or to pickle. The cucumbers which are ripe before April are wholesome; being raised wholly by the heat of the dung without the assistance of the sun. Those raised in April are good, and are raised in the following manner.

Towards the latter end of January, a quantity of fresh horse-dung must be procured with the litter among it; and a small proportion of sea-coal ashes should be added to it. In four or five days the dung will begin to heat; at which time a little of it may be drawn flat on the outside, and covered with two inches thickness of good earth: this must be covered with a bell glass; and after two days, when the earth is warm, the seeds must be sown on it, covered with a quarter of an inch of fresh earth, and the glass then set on again. The glass must be covered with a mat at night, and in four days the young plants will appear. When these are seen, the rest of the dung must be made up into a bed for one or more lights. This must be three feet thick, beat close together, and covered three inches deep with fine fresh earth; the frame must then be put on, and covered at night, or in bad weather, with mats. When the earth is hot enough, the young plants from under the bell must be removed into it, and set two inches distant. The glasses must be now and then a little raised, to give air to the plants, and turned often, to prevent the wet from the steam of the dung from dropping down upon them. The plants must be watered at proper times; and the water used for this purpose must be set on the dung till it becomes as warm as the air in the frame: and as the young plants increase in bulk, they must be earthed up, which will give them great additional strength. If the bed is not hot enough, some fresh litter should be laid round its sides: and if too hot, some holes should be bored into several parts of it with a stake, which will let out the heat; and when the bed is thus brought to a proper coolness, the holes are to be stopped up again with fresh dung. When these plants begin to shoot their third or rough leaf, another bed must be prepared for them like the first; and when it is properly warm through the earth, the plants of the other bed must be taken up, and planted in this, in which there must be a hole in the middle of each light, about a foot deep, and nine inches over, filled with light and fine fresh earth laid hollow in form of a basin: in each of these holes there must be set four plants: these must be, for two or three days, shaded from the sun, that they may take firm root; after which they must have all the sun they can, and now and then a little fresh air, as the weather will permit. When the plants are four or five inches high, they must be gently pegged down towards the earth, in directions as different from one another as may be; and the branches afterwards produced should be treated in the same manner. In a month after this the flowers will appear, and soon after the rudiments of the fruit. The glasses should now be carefully covered at night; and in the daytime the whole plants should be gently sprinkled with water. These will produce fruit till about midsummer; at which time the second crop will come in to supply their place; these are to be raised in the same manner as the early crop, only they do not require so much care and trouble. This second crop should be sown in the end of March or beginning of April. The season for sowing the cucumbers of the last crop, and for pickling, is towards the latter end of May, when the weather is settled: these are sown in holes dug to a little depth, and filled up with fine earth, so as to be left in the form of a basin; eight or nine seeds being put into one hole. These will come up in five or six days; and till they are a week old, are in great danger from the sparrows. After this they require only to be kept clear of weeds, and watered now and then. There should be only five plants left at first in each hole; and when they are grown a little farther up, the worst of these is to be pulled up, that there may finally remain only four. The plants of this crop will begin to produce fruit in July.