GardenCucumber variety
Telegraph Improved Cucumber
✓ In your garden
Telegraph Improved is a slicing cucumber, ready in about 62 days. It’s grown for slicing into salads and sandwiches. Cucumbers are warm-season and thirsty — plant after frost, keep them watered, and pick often to keep them coming.
“A crisp slicing cucumber for fresh eating.”
Growing basics — shared by every cucumber
Telegraph Improved 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 Telegraph Improved good for?
- Fresh & saladsCrisp and cooling. Great
- Slicing for sandwichesEven, mild slices. Great
- PicklingBetter with a true pickling type. Skip it
From how it grows — kitchens vary.
—
Want the full 10/50/90% odds + nearest stations? Open the frost tool →When to plant Telegraph Improved 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 late May, well before your typical frost (~late Oct).
- Start seeds indoors
- mid Mar – mid Mar
- Picking
- late May until frost (~late Oct)
Typical dates for zone 6b — set your zone or ZIP above for yours.
Growing Telegraph Improved — 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.
Telegraph Improved cucumber at a glance
| Type | Slicing |
|---|---|
| Grows as | Tall vine (indeterminate) |
| Days to ripe | 62 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 Telegraph Improved
How long does Telegraph Improved take to grow?
About 62 days from sowing to the first pick, then it keeps producing for weeks if you keep picking.
Is Telegraph Improved for slicing or pickling?
It’s a slicing cucumber — grown for fresh eating and salads.
Does Telegraph Improved need a trellis?
It does best on a trellis: climbing keeps the fruit straight and clean and improves airflow.
Browse more cucumber varieties →