Hi, Ela: Thanks for this fantastic question! One thing that may be happening concerns the fact that English cucumbers are self-fruiting, not in the sense that they pollinate themselves (as self-fruiting often means), but that they don’t need pollination. For this reason, they produce only female flowers. If a bee or the wind or whatever comes along and pollinates that flower, then the resulting fruit will usually be misshapen in some way. So if your cukes are not only not straight, but also bulging or curving, etc., then you may have to take steps to prevent the flowers from being pollinated. However, if your cukes continue to be of uniform diameter as they curve, then the solution may be somewhat more straightforward: gravity. Just grow them from a trellis so that they hang down, and gravity will hopefully keep pulling them down on the straight and narrow—or at least more than they appear to be now. Thanks again, and good luck!
Hi, Ela: Thanks for this fantastic question! One thing that may be happening concerns the fact that English cucumbers are self-fruiting, not in the sense that they pollinate themselves (as self-fruiting often means), but that they don’t need pollination. For this reason, they produce only female flowers. If a bee or the wind or whatever comes along and pollinates that flower, then the resulting fruit will usually be misshapen in some way. So if your cukes are not only not straight, but also bulging or curving, etc., then you may have to take steps to prevent the flowers from being pollinated. However, if your cukes continue to be of uniform diameter as they curve, then the solution may be somewhat more straightforward: gravity. Just grow them from a trellis so that they hang down, and gravity will hopefully keep pulling them down on the straight and narrow—or at least more than they appear to be now. Thanks again, and good luck!