No, you should not remove cucumber flowers in most cases. Your plants need both male and female blooms to make fruit. Take away the flowers and you won't get any cucumbers at all. Let them be and let the bees do their job.
I made this mistake my first year growing cucumbers. I saw flowers falling off the vine and thought something was wrong. I picked off what looked like dying blooms to help the plant. It turns out I was removing the male flowers that my female ones needed.
Your male cucumber flowers show up first on your plants. They often appear a week or two before any females. You can spot them by their thin stems with no bulge behind the petals. Their only job is making pollen for bees to carry. Once they release their pollen, they fall off on their own.
Your female cucumber flowers have a tiny cucumber shape behind the yellow petals. This small bulge grows into your fruit after a bee brings pollen. Without that pollen, the baby cucumber turns yellow and drops off. Look for this mini fruit shape to tell females from males.
You should only do cucumber flower removal with special greenhouse types. They make fruit without pollen. If pollen reaches them, your cucumbers turn bitter and full of seeds. Keep these plants away from standard types in your garden.
You can spot these special types by their seed packet labels. They say all-female or gynoecious on the front. If you grow them outside near regular cucumbers, you may need to pull off nearby male flowers. This stops bitter fruit from forming in your harvest.
You're most likely growing standard types. These need male cucumber flowers and female cucumber flowers together to make fruit. Let nature run its course. The bees handle the rest. Your plants drop spent blooms when done and you don't need to help.
If your cucumbers aren't making fruit, you're probably dealing with poor pollination. Try planting bright flowers nearby to attract more bees to your garden. You can also do it yourself using a small brush. Just dab pollen from a male bloom and brush it onto a female flower's center.
I now leave all my flowers alone unless I'm growing greenhouse types. Even then, I only remove male flowers during the first few weeks of bloom. After that, the plants make mostly female flowers on their own and don't need my help at all.
Watch your plants each morning to learn how the flowers work. You'll start to notice which ones are male and which are female. Look at the stem behind each bloom. This helps you spot problems early and understand why some flowers become cucumbers.
My neighbor spent her whole first season pulling off male flowers. She thought they were wasted energy. She didn't get a single cucumber that year. Once I showed her the difference between bloom types, she left them alone. Her next harvest filled three full baskets.
You should also know that cool weather can slow down pollination. Bees don't fly when temps drop below 55°F (13°C). If you have a cold snap during your bloom time, your flowers may drop without making fruit. Wait for warmer days and your plants will try again with new blooms.
Read the full article: Growing Cucumbers: Expert Advice for Beginners
