Cucumbers

We love eating cucumbers in our family and we make the best bread and butter pickles around if I say so myself. There are a few common problems you can have growing cucumbers and I thought I would address how to fix those problems in this post.

Cucumbers:

First of all cucumbers need to be planted where they can get full sun...they like well drained soil. We always add a good amount of compost and then make a raised hill and place our cucumber plant in the middle of this hill. We make the hill so that when it rains the water runs off the hill... cucumbers plants do not like to sit in water!

We feed our cucumbers with compost tea about a month later.

Problems we have had...

Fruit sometimes taste bitter? This is because they did not get enough water while they were forming..we water more often when we see blooms appear.


White coating on leaves? This is powdery mildew...I spray with baking soda recipe every 7-10 days. I try to avoid watering the leaves and evening watering....I only water the soil!

Yellow or Brown spots: Downy mildew this usually means we have had a lot of wet weather. I pull up the plants as soon as possible to prevent the disease from spreading to other plants. ( I *Do Not* compost these plants!

Wilted or shriveled up leaves: I usually find squash bugs on my plants. I pull these up as soon as possible and I again Do Not compost these plants. I have heard that you can use spun row covers to prevent this problem. We now use crop rotation and it has helped us with this problem.

Plants wilt quickly: Cucumber Beetles is usually the problem here...again you can use a spun row cover. Make sure you are not over watering if you do not see any pests.

Baking soda Recipe

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons vegetable oil

1 quart of water

I mix into a spray bottle and spray on my plants for 7-10 days I have found this really does help with powdery mildew.

Happy Gardening..

Lynn