The Unique, Antique Garden Tool That Gardeners Rarely Use Anymore

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While some cucumber varieties are straighter than others, generally speaking, many of them have a curl, curve, or kink of some kind. Rarely does a cucumber grow completely straight. And to be honest, in the more than 20 years I've been growing my own food, it's never once bothered me, because I'm going to slice it up and eat it. So who cares if it's got a slight curve? For most of us, how much curve we'll get isn't an issue we need to know about before growing cucumbers. Victorian gardeners, however, would not agree with me, which kind of makes sense. In polite Victorian society, everything was neat and perfect on the surface. It follows that they would prefer their cucumbers be straight and conform, instead of slightly unruly.

To this end, they came up with a tool for eliminating the possibility of a curve in the cucumber: the cucumber straightener. This was basically an open-ended glass tube that was placed over young cucumbers to force them to grow in dead-straight form down the length of the glass. We do see some novelty varieties of these today in the form of apple shapers or squash molds, but generally speaking, this quirky antique garden tool isn't really used anymore. A much easier way to get straighter, healthier cucumbers is to simply support the vines and grow them on a trellis. One of the benefits of growing cucumbers vertically is that the fruits tend to grow straight down rather than curving too much. But still many varieties will produce curvy or slightly wonky cucumbers.

The cucumber straightener is credited to George Stephenson, the renowned railway engineer responsible for some of Britain's first steam locomotives. Apparently growing cucumbers was a source of passion and pride for him when he wasn't busy with the railway. He cared enough about the results to have custom equipment made to ensure he got the perfect cucumber. In fact, he had glass cylinders cast at his own steam engine factory in Newcastle, specifically for keeping cucumbers straight. Thankfully today, we care less about the straightness of our cucumbers. This is one of many old-school garden tools that nobody uses anymore, as growing methods and priorities changed. Cucumber straighteners don't improve taste or yield. They are purely for appearances.

Much of the Victorian world was about taming, standardizing, and civilizing nature. It was the norm to take something wild and unpredictable and force it into a tidy uniform shape or habit. The Victorian era was fixated on appearances and order. Therefore, an unpredictably curved cucumber was unacceptable to large portions of "civilized" society during this period. While, thankfully, most home growers are not remotely fussed about the curve of their cucumbers, there is still some of this instinct to force order on nature, or where something more ordered and uniformed is assumed to be more appealing. Even today, grocery retailers and merchants will screen out wonky veg, whether that's extra curvy cucumbers, oddly shaped carrots, or too-tiny potatoes. This practice contributes to global food waste enormously and yet is still considered the norm.

While forcing cucumbers to be perfectly straight to conform to Victorian sensibilities is firmly out of fashion, from the humble, if not ridiculous, cucumber straightener came fun modern alternatives. You can get all kinds of vegetable forms and fruit forms. For example, heart-shaped molds that you place over juvenile apples and they will fill the container and grow into the shape of the heart. You can do the same with melons, squashes, and other fruiting crops. 

I've seen some awesome Halloween forms suitable for pumpkins and squashes in the shape of Frankenstein, skulls, or other fun spooky-season characters. You can also get square molds designed for watermelons that you can also use for other large fruiting crops like pumpkins. And there are cucumber forms in heart-shaped cylinders so when you slice, you get beautiful heart-shaped pieces. They aren't necessary but they can be fun, especially if you go all out for Halloween. It can also be a good way to get the kids excited about what's coming out of the garden.