GardenCucumber variety
Northern Pickling Cucumber
✓ In your garden
Northern Pickling is a pickling cucumber, ready in about 48 days. It’s bred for pickling — small and crisp — and fine fresh when picked young. Cucumbers are warm-season and thirsty — plant after frost, keep them watered, and pick often to keep them coming.
“A small, crisp cucumber bred for the pickle jar.”
Growing basics — shared by every cucumber
Northern Pickling grows like any other cucumber. The full picture — how deep to plant, spacing, feeding, pests, harvest — lives on the Cucumber page so it's maintained in one place.
- Sun
- Full Sun
- Spacing (in row)
- 8–12 in
- Row spacing
- 48–72 in
- Planting depth
- 0.5–1 in
- Soil pH
- 6–6.5
- Water
- Moderate
What is Northern Pickling good for?
- PicklingThis is the job — pick them small. Great
- Fresh & saladsFine young; best used for pickles. Skip it
- Slicing thickToo small and seedy for big slices. Skip it
From how it grows — kitchens vary.
—
Want the full 10/50/90% odds + nearest stations? Open the frost tool →When to plant Northern Pickling in your zone
Zone 6bGreenhouse or cover on: your start slides ~4 weeks earlier and your harvest stretches ~3 weeks later (shown striped).
Planting seeds straight in the ground only works where the season's long and warm — most gardeners start seeds indoors or buy young plants, or you'd pick your first tomato right as frost hits.
Comfortable — first ripe fruit lands around early May, well before your typical frost (~late Oct).
- Start seeds indoors
- mid Mar – mid Mar
- Picking
- early May until frost (~late Oct)
Typical dates for zone 6b — set your zone or ZIP above for yours.
Growing Northern Pickling — the things that trip people up
- Pick often and pick young. A cucumber left on the vine turns big, seedy, and bitter, and it tells the plant to stop making more — so harvest every day or two at peak.
- Give it a trellis. Vining cucumbers climb, which saves space, keeps the fruit clean and straight, and cuts down on disease.
Northern Pickling cucumber at a glance
| Type | Pickling |
|---|---|
| Grows as | Tall vine (indeterminate) |
| Days to ripe | 48 days after you plant it outside |
| Color | Green |
Extra fields from seed-catalog listings and university growing guides. Days to ripe and disease resistance shift with your climate and seed source — double-check with your local extension office before you buy.
Save it and the plant lights up — kept right here in your browser, no account needed. It's the first thing GardenTrack starts remembering for you.
Kept on this device. Want it safe if your browser clears or you switch phones? Back it up free — just your email, no password.
GardenTrack is in beta now — it'll remember every plant you add here and tell you what to do and when. One email, no spam.
Common questions about Northern Pickling
How long does Northern Pickling take to grow?
About 48 days from sowing to the first pick, then it keeps producing for weeks if you keep picking.
Is Northern Pickling for slicing or pickling?
It’s a pickling cucumber — small and crisp for the jar, and edible fresh when young.
Does Northern Pickling need a trellis?
It does best on a trellis: climbing keeps the fruit straight and clean and improves airflow.
Browse more cucumber varieties →