Abstract: In order to improve the utilization rate of agricultural waste and reduce dependence on non-renewable resource, taking ‘Bojie 52’ cucumber as experiment material, and traditional peat, perlite and vermiculite media as contrast, the authors studied the physical and chemical properties of six substrates with different mixing proportions of peanut shell, cow dung, peat, perlite and vermiculite, and their effect on cucumber seedling culture. A random block design was adopted with the electrical conductivity meter, portable chlorophyll meter and optical instrument and so on. The results indicated that the physical and chemical properties of the used peanut shell and cow dung compound substrate were within the standard range of nursery for cucumber seedling. After 40 days’ growing on different compound substrates, the cucumber plant height, stem diameter, leaf area, dry weight over ground and dry weight underground were higher than those of the control, and the effects of treatment 4 (peanut shell: vermiculite: perlite=3:1:1) and treatment 2 (peanut shell: peat: vermiculite=1:1:1) were the most obvious. Compared with the control, treatment 4 (peanut shell: vermiculite: perlite=3:1:1) had deep green leaves, the leaf chlorophyll content of representative leaves was 47.03 mg/g; net photosynthetic rate and photosynthetic active radiation were higher than those of the control, which were 13.83 and 512 μmol/(m²·s), respectively, the transpiration rate was low as 2.28 mmol/(m²·s); photochemical quantum yield Y(II) was 0.65. It indicated that the contents of chlorophyll in the leaves were higher. ETR was 82.6, which showed that the apparent electron transfer rate was high, which was beneficial for photosynthesis. The compound substrate of treatment 4 was suitable for cucumber seedling nursery, and had high quality seedling and low cost, so it could be promoted in production.