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Cucumber

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Cucumis sativus

Cucumber is clean, watery, and crisp, with a mild green flavor. It is a warm-season cucurbit whose high water content makes it feel especially refreshing.1

Cucumber is a cucurbit selected for watery, crisp fruit rather than the dense flesh and long storage of a winter squash.

Maine growers distinguish pickling types from slicing types partly by skin thickness and water content; those traits affect texture after preservation.2

“Pickled” does not necessarily mean fermented. A cucumber can be acidified directly with vinegar, kept refrigerated in an acid brine, or fully fermented by lactic-acid bacteria; the three routes produce different flavors, textures, and keeping qualities.3

Footnotes

  1. University of Maine Cooperative Extension, “Food & Nutrition for the Home Gardener,” accessed July 17, 2026. ↩

  2. University of Maine Cooperative Extension, “How to Plan Your Garden for Canning and Preserving,” 2023. ↩

  3. Robert W. Hutkins, Microbiology and Technology of Fermented Foods (Blackwell Publishing, 2006), PDF p. 253. ↩

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