Up until the 1970s, the crop was harvested by hand, but since that time, the crop increasingly has been harvested by machine in a once-over, destructive single harvest. Today, essentially all of pickling cucumbers are harvested by machine. Growers also will deliver their pickle cucumbers to a local handler, W.O. Whitely, Inc., for shipping to processors in other states. Mechanically harvested pickles are a short-season crop, requiring only 40 to 50 days from planting to harvest, depending on the weather and time of year. Late-summer pickles take longer because cooler temperatures and shorter days slow the growth and development of the plant.
Pickles are usually double-cropped with any one of several crops.
Often pickles follow pickles. In the early 1960s, a breakthrough in cucumber breeding by USDA workers at the University of Wisconsin lead the way for the mechanical harvest of pickles. These scientists developed the first gynoecious lines and a technique for maintaining gynoecious lines for breeding and commercial seed production. Gynoecious plants express female flowers for an all-female phenotype. This allows the pickles to mature at the same time, which facilitates a single harvest.