femspot cucumbers.advice please

[matowakan]

I have never grown cucumbers before but thought I would give it a go and now have 2 femspots.
Can I grow them outside or should I put them in the polytunnel?
Also Should they be trained to grow up a trellis or can I leave them just to spread.
I think I am right in saying that they only have female flowers so dont need to pick off the male ones?
Any advice gratefully received.

[Annpan]

Why would you pick off male flowers? how do they polinate if they only have female flowers, how do they polinate if you were to pick off male flowers?
I'm confused


I've never grown cucumbers before either, I am keeping them all in the PT, but then I am in the frozen north.

[Green Aura]

If you don't pick off the male flowers your cucmbers will be really bitter. I presume the seeds (in the cucumber) from unpollinated flowers will be sterile.

F1 hybrids are the way to go if you've never grown cucumbers before - they're usually all female.

Of course you can't save your own seed from them though! My old neighbours used to let the male flowers stay on at the end of the season to get a few cucumbers to produce viable seeds.

By the way, you can tell the female flowers, they're bigger and have a teeny tiny cucumber at there base - small flowers with no baby have to go