Last year’s cucumber crop was embarrassing.

I had about 10 times as many cucumbers as a person should have. They went into everything—salads, pickles, tzatziki sauce, tacos, more salads and eventually the composter. Now I know better: no more planting six cucumber plants! This year I’ll plant just two.

Those two are new introductions from the folks at PanAmerican Seed, a breeding company in the Chicago suburbs. These new varieties appear in the company’s HandPicked Vegetables line, which includes lots of the most popular home gardener crops.

Gherking

Gherking is a pickling cucumber, if you couldn’t tell by the name. It’s an early-to-produce variety, coming ready in just 50-55 days from transplanting, so you’ll be the first on your block with pickled treats. A high fruit count on each plant ensures you a) have plenty of pickles to can and share and b) you need only plant one or two plants. The fruits are bitter-free, too, they say. I’m not sure I have ever had a bitter cucumber but maybe I’ll notice a difference when growing and producing it myself. Gherking is reportedly highly resistant to scab and intermediately resistant to powdery and downy mildews. This means come August the plants will keep ticking along without a slowdown in production.

Martini Cucumbers

Martini is a slicing cucumber. Its unusual name comes from the color of its skin, which appears to be a ghostly greenish white. I’m speculating, of course, but the color is reminiscent of a gin martini with an olive reflected in the liquid. Martini is ready to harvest in 55-60 days. This one is also resistant to powdery mildew. Use it as you would other slicing types: salads, taco toppings, shredded in sauces and so forth. Growing to 4-6 ft., both could use some sort of trellis to save space in the garden.

Other than that, the same growing recommendations apply to these varieties as other cucumbers in general: Keep well watered, use an all-purpose fertilizer for the first month of growth, and harvest daily—cukes that get lost under leaves grow mightily fast! Look for Gherking and Martini cucumbers as transplants in your garden center starting the spring of 2017.