Each month, SoCo Seed Collective shines a spotlight on a special heirloom variety that’s beautiful, historic, and perfect for home gardens in Southern Maryland. For May, we’re excited to feature the Boothby’s Blonde cucumber — a quirky and delicious favorite that deserves a spot in your garden and your kitchen.
What Makes It Special?
Boothby’s Blonde is an heirloom cucumber from Livermore, Maine, passed down through generations of the Boothby family. This variety is short, plump, and pale yellow with a sweet, mild flavor. Its tender skin and compact size make it a fantastic snacking cucumber, and it’s equally great for pickling. It’s also quite prolific — once it gets going, expect to be harvesting frequently!
A Taste Worth Saving
Boothby’s Blonde is recognized by Slow Food USA’s Ark of Taste, a living catalog of delicious and distinctive foods facing extinction. By growing and sharing this variety, we help preserve its unique story and flavor for future generations.
Why We Love It
We love Boothby’s Blonde not just for its charm and taste, but also for how well it performs in small gardens. It’s a great candidate for succession planting, and because it matures early, you can enjoy fresh cucumbers well before the heat of summer slows things down.
Seed Saving Tips
Like other open-pollinated cucumbers, Boothby’s Blonde is ideal for seed saving. Just be sure to let a few fruits fully mature on the vine — they’ll turn deep yellow and grow larger than you’d expect. Allow them to sit for a few weeks after harvest before extracting and drying the seeds for next season.
Find It at Our Events
We offer Boothby’s Blonde seeds in our Seed Library!
Want to learn more about heirlooms and seed saving? Come chat with us at our next free community event, or join our monthly newsletter for growing tips, upcoming activities, and ways to get involved with the SoCo Seed Collective.