This was one disappointing plant.
Since the weather in San Francisco is not conducive to growing cucumbers, I am growing these indoors in an area that has direct sun most of the day with a fan to circulate air at a regular interval. Since I am growing cucumbers indoors, I chose parthenocarpic varieties so they wouldn’t require fertilization. I grew two plants at the same time, and let them grow to 4 feet, noting just how few female flowers it was producing, and how many male flowers. It was a 1:12 ratio. Not a single female flower grew into a fruit, they just withered and died.
Thinking this was a matter of inadequate fertilization in the soil, I tried again with another two plants in a fresh batch of soil with extra fertilizer, and got the same results. I decided to hand pollinate some of the female flowers whenever they showed up, and those did grow into full size fruit.
Lesson learned: the H19 seeds I got are definitely not parthenocarpic. Maybe it was just a bad batch, I don’t know. The cucumbers that did grow weren’t that good for fresh eating – a bit spongey in texture, kind of like raw zucchini. I won’t bother trying them from a different seed supplier.