No. 0488 · Cucumis sativus
Pale Moon Cucumber
- Crop
- Vegetable
- Climate
- Temperate
- Season
- Summer
- Origin
- Spreewald, Germany
At risk, kept by 3 growers
No. 0488The variety
A short, creamy white pickling cucumber from the waterways of the Spreewald, crisp and thin-skinned.
Grows best inWarm, humid summers near water
Seed passport
Perennial Seed Library · Season 2026
- Origin
- Spreewald, Germany
- First documented
- 1911
- Days to maturity
- 55 to 65 days
- Height
- Trailing vines to 2 m
- Hardiness
- Frost tender
- Sun
- Full sun
- Spacing
- 60 cm, trellised or sprawling
- Flavor notes
- Crisp, cool and never bitter
No. 0488Growth timeline
From sowing to saving seed.
Stage 01 of 06
No. 0488Story
The story of Pale Moon Cucumber
The Spreewald is a maze of canals south of Berlin where cucumbers were once delivered by punt. Pale Moon is one of the old local pickling types, short and creamy white, grown by families who pickled them in stoneware crocks with dill, oak leaves and a little mustard seed.
Commercial pickling varieties replaced it in the 1960s. Three growers in the network still save it, and each grow-out is checked carefully, because cucumbers cross readily with every other cucumber nearby.
Grown by
3 growers this season
Ruth Adeyemi-Hart
Hudson Valley, New York
Hanne Mortensen
Jutland, Denmark
Dorin Matei
Danube Delta, Romania
Lending list · Season 2026
Borrow this seed.
Members borrow up to twelve varieties a year. Seed is posted on the first Monday of the month in a hand-numbered paper packet, and all we ask in return is a little of your harvest and a few lines about how it grew.