How to store cucumbers

Holy cow! A few days ago, I wrote a Facebook post about a new tip. It was about how to store  cucumbers so they stay fresh. Little did I realize how many folks would find this tip so useful!

As I write this, 7 MILLION people have seen the post! There have been 17,000 comments and an astounding 82,000 shares! So this has been my most popular Facebook post EVER. A few years ago, I had a post that also went viral (it was a video that showed goldfinches eating the seeds in some of my spent black-eyed Susans, if you’re curious) but that post “only” had a reach of about 150,000.

So how do you store cucumbers after you’ve picked them? Wrap each cucumber in a paper towel, then place them inside a plastic bag (I only close the bag loosely), and put them into the refrigerator.

In the past, I’ve been so frustrated any time I harvested cucumbers from our garden. If I left them on the kitchen counter, they would begin deteriorating very quickly. The same thing would happen if I placed them in our fridge.

About 2 weeks ago, I thought we were going to have a frost so I picked the last 7 cucumbers off the vines. As I brought them indoors, I remembered my past luck with getting them to stay crispy and fresh. On a whim, I did a web search on “how to store cucumbers” and read the information on the MyRecipes.com.

I immediately used this method. We’ve eaten 3 of the cucumbers so far and the remaining cucumbers are still just as fresh and crispy as the day I picked them! Honest. So if you have any cucumbers left in your garden, try this method. And hopefully you’ll also remember this tip next year! I plan to add this information to my Preserving the Harvest guide (under the “Guides” menu) so you can refer to it later. You might be interested to learn there are all sorts of tips, and a few recipes, in that guide. Since we’re all in the thick of harvest season, you just might need to refer to it from time to time.

I also have a video about the cucumber-storage trick. Here’s a link to it.