Problems with Cucumbers - Ep. 201

Karin Velez [00:00:00]:

The summer gardening season is just about in full swing here in the northern hemisphere and cucumbers are definitely a crowd favorite Whether you're growing them for slicing, snacking, or pickling, a properly managed cucumber vine can be very productive. But it seems like when things go wrong with cucumbers, they go really wrong. Whether it's dying plants, funky looking fruit, diseases, or other issues with our favorite, we do have preventions and solutions. Today on just grow something, we're talking all about the problems we might have with cucumbers, pests and diseases, nutrient challenges, strange deformities, and all kinds of stuff. But by the end, you should have a firm grasp on how to prevent these problems from occurring and how to recognize what you're dealing with when they do.

Karin Velez [00:02:14]:

Real quick, I want to speak to my gardeners on the West Coast of the US and the terrible heat dome that you all have been stuck under. I hope that you are all doing what you can to keep yourselves comfortable and safe and that your gardens are surviving. I have seen folks put shade covers up over top of their crops during extreme heat events like this with very good success. So don't underestimate how much that may help if you can do it. Just be sure any coverings you put up are high enough above the crop to still allow for good airflow, and it isn't trapping more hot air in closer to the plants. Lots of mulch is also going to help here by keeping the root zone cooler, which absolutely helps as the temperatures begin to rise and focus on very thorough waterings since deeper the water goes, the less likely it is to just evaporate into the air in the extreme heat. So please stay safe, and hopefully, your gardens are doing okay.

Karin Velez [00:03:18]:

This is also a shout out to my brand new gardeners or my gardeners who are struggling with learning something new in the garden this season. Please remember that gardening is just like any other skill. It takes practice and experience to really begin to master it. And then unlike most other skills, you get to deal with lots of unpredictability, whether that's in terms of heat or drought or flood or insect pests or other unforeseen circumstances that maybe may take you away from home for an extended period of time only to come back to, like, a wilderness of weeds in absolute havoc. I see you. I know it's frustrating, but please know that even the littlest bit of effort, even with just 15 minutes at a time, actually does have an impact in the garden. And every single one of these experiences is giving you new knowledge to get you to take into the next season. I have grown for the public for 17 years now, and, inevitably, I have 1 or 2 areas that are totally under control and thriving.

Karin Velez [00:04:32]:

And then I will have another 1 or 2 that look like I should just take a flamethrower to the whole thing and just start all over again. But I still get harvests out of both of them, and they are both nutritionally more dense than anything I could ever get at the store for my family. And so I take comfort in that when my frustration gets the better of me. And just remember that little efforts go a long way. And if I've just had it, then maybe I should just walk away and come back again tomorrow. Don't let your garden get you so frustrated or sad or mad or make you feel like such a failure that you abandon it altogether. Yes. This is a way to feed our families.

Karin Velez [00:05:17]:

Yes. This is a skill we should learn, but it also should be fun. It should be enjoyable. It should be a good way to get exercise and a good way to get fresh air and a good way to get maybe some time with some family members who are out there helping you. Whatever it is, what it comes down to is there really is power in food, and I want each of you to feel that power, even if it comes in the form of 1 single item on your dinner plate at night that you grew yourself. So don't give up. Don't get frustrated. Just keep moving forward.

Karin Velez [00:05:57]:

Okay. So, let's dig into the most common problems that we might face when we're growing cucumbers. I love cucumbers. I grow all kinds of varieties and types of cucumbers, but here in West Central Missouri, oftentimes, we have all kinds of issues with cucumbers, not the least of which is pests. So we're gonna start with pest problems. Beetles, aphids, there are all kinds of insects that find cucumbers just as irresistible as we do, and I think number 1 on that list is cucumber beetles. Now these are both striped and spotted cucumber beetles. They chew on the leaves, which can cause damage, and obviously, that's going to interrupt the photosynthesis problem or process.

Karin Velez [00:06:42]:

But they can also damage the fruit. If you have an overwhelming number of them, they will start to damage the fruit. But the bigger problem is that they transmit bacterial wilt, and that is a disease of cucumbers. We'll talk about that here a little bit more in-depth when we get into the diseases we might be dealing with, but that is probably the main reason that you want to keep cucumber beetles at bay. The easiest thing to do with this is to use insect netting or row covers to protect the plants when they're really young, So that will help keep them at bay for the beginning part of the season. But if you're growing a variety that is not parthenocarpic, meaning it needs a pollinator, then as soon as it starts flowering, you're gonna have to uncover those plants unless you plan on hand pollinating. We'll also talk about that here a little bit. So if you can plant things or grow things with your cucumbers that are going to attract the beneficial insects that might help, but there's not too many things that I can think of that actually predate on the cucumber beetles and I honestly haven't looked it up, so don't quote me on that, but I've not seen anything in my area that actually goes after them.

Karin Velez [00:07:56]:

So your best bet may be to use an insecticidal soap or a neem oil. In my case, this year, I'm version of spinosad. Alternating that, version of spinosad, alternating that with Elm Dirt's shield. That is the the new product that they have come out with. It's got some kaolin clay in it and such. Because the spinosad, you can only use so many times and you have to follow the instructions on there about how often you should be using it. And so I want to be able to extend that out to make sure that I can continue using it throughout the season. So I will use it once, and then I'll wait the 7 to 10 days.

Karin Velez [00:08:37]:

And when it's time to do it again, instead, I am using the shield in between, and that seems to be working so far. It's still the beginning of the season. So I'm also out there checking for beetles constantly, and I haven't seen a whole lot of pressure from them. I have in the past used First Saturday Lime, not so much that it actually kills the beetles or anything like that, but they seem to just not like the texture of the lime on the leaves. And it may be because it's coating the leaves that they don't like to eat the leaves when they've got it on there, so that's an option too. There are all kinds of different things that you can use. The good thing about most of these things is that they are not going to harm the pollinators. I believe the spinosad will if you apply it during the wrong time of the day, so you don't wanna see any you know, be spraying it when there's a bunch of pollinators flying around.

Karin Velez [00:09:26]:

But everything else I think I think is is, you know, okay for the beneficial, so we don't have to worry about it as much. Another one that cucumbers get is aphids, and it seems like everything gets aphids. These, you know, are tiny little insects. They just seem to congregate on just about anything we wanna grow. They can cause the leaves on your cucumber plant to start to curl, which can also stunt the plant growth. Easiest remedy for aphids, if you have a water source nearby, is to just blast them off with a spray from the hose. Right? Because the beneficials will absolutely take care of these for you if you're not using any pesticides in your garden. So the ladybug larvae will come in, and they are voracious feeders on aphids.

Karin Velez [00:10:15]:

Crane flies will eat aphids. There's all kinds of different insects that will come in and they will eat aphids eat aphids, but you just have to give them the chance to be able to come in. So my approach with aphids is if I don't see them actively doing any damage at the time that I discover them, I generally will wait, and I will keep an eye out to see whether or not those good bugs come in and start taking out the aphids for me. If I see that they're not really doing the job or maybe there's not enough of them or we've just got an insane number of them, then I will just go ahead and start blasting off with water. And if necessary, then I will use, you know, something, some sort of a spray. So and then one more common pest with cucumbers is spider mites. These are going to cause yellow speckling on the leaves, And again, this can inter interrupt the photosynthesis process, which can cause stunted plants. Beneficial insects like ladybugs are perfect for this.

Karin Velez [00:11:16]:

If they aren't, there aren't enough of them in your garden, then you might need to use some sort of a miticide. If you've got these pests, again, if you can keep the garden clean and free of debris where these pests can hide, that's gonna help. That also means keeping the weeds out too that where they might hide. And if you can encourage beneficial insects planting the flowers and the herbs that attract them in and around your cucumbers, then that's even better. The beneficial insects are things like ladybugs, lace wings, predatory mites. These are actually probably your first and best line of defense, but then if that doesn't work, then again, spraying them down with the hose, using neem oil, insecticidal soaps, or any of these other things that I've mentioned are gonna be the way to go. Next up is diseases, and, unfortunately, diseases can very, very quickly ruin a cucumber crop. You can have them looking fantastic one day, and in a matter of days, you may have dead plants.

Karin Velez [00:12:10]:

The the two main fungal diseases are powdery mildew and downy mildew. So powdery mildew is the white sort of powdery spots that end up all over the leaves. These are usually very common when you have a high humidity or you've had a lot of rain, or if you've been doing some overhead watering and there isn't enough airflow. So to prevent this, you definitely wanna make sure that you are spacing the plants, appropriately apart from each other if this has been a problem for you in the past. If you can trellis the plants, that's gonna help with the the airflow. If you can avoid overhead watering, not using a sprinkler, but instead watering at the base of the plants, that is also going to help. Downy mildew are the yellow spots that start to pop up, and they basically love the same types of, conditions that the powdery mildew does. The good thing is is that there are disease resistant varieties to both of these that you can plant if it's something that's usually a problem.

Karin Velez [00:13:17]:

Once you see that you've got the powdery mildew or if you're trying to prevent it, there are lots of different options for you. And generally speaking, it just involves somehow altering the pH of the leaf surface to keep that fungus at bay.

Karin Velez [00:13:34]:

There are a very specific set of circumstances that these diseases need to thrive, and pH is one of those. And so if you can use a milk and water combo to spray down the leaves, if you can use for Saturday lime, if you use baking soda, or a spray of vinegar and water, something that is going to change the pH of the leaf surface is going to, a, prevent that mildew from ever taking hold, but then, b, if it does take hold, it's gonna help prevent the spread of it until things sort of tend to dry out a little bit. Now if you live someplace where it stays super, super humid and damp all season long, well, you might just be battling this constantly. In my area, eventually, right about the end of June, mother nature generally turns off the faucet, and we don't have any more rains. And so it starts to dry out a little bit, and, of course, it starts to get really hot. So if I have powdery mildew in any of these plants, it tends to go away. It tends to dry up. So as long as I can manage it until that point, then we're usually okay.

Karin Velez [00:14:39]:

So it may be different for you, but that has been my experience. The other two diseases we generally have to worry about with cucumbers are bacterial diseases. And the first one is that bacterial wilt that we talked about that's spread by the cucumber beetles. This wilt is spread through their saliva when they are biting into the leaf surface and or the stems, whatever they're chewing on. This bacteria is then introduced into the plant and it spreads throughout the plant, causing it to wilt and eventually die. You will have no idea until the plant is practically dead that you have a bacterial wilt problem because it will quite literally look beautiful one day. You'll come out the next day, and everything will be sort of wilted over, and they just look like they really need a drink of water. It doesn't matter how much water you give them.

Karin Velez [00:15:30]:

They don't bounce back. They don't perk up overnight. And usually within about 48 hours after that, they're those vines are practically dead. And so you'll just have these sort of, you know, limp vines hanging there on the trellis and the and the, you know, the the fruit that was trying to form is just hanging there by itself because the plant has literally died. It does happen that fast. And the only way to prevent the spread of bacterial wilt is to control the cucumber beetles. The other bacterial problem is angular leaf spots. So this is going to cause spots on the leaves that look like they're sort of bubbled up with liquid in the inside.

Karin Velez [00:16:12]:

And the easiest way to prevent this is the same way that we prevent like blight and stuff in our tomatoes is to use a copper based fungicide. If this has been a problem for you before, you can start using that fungicide as soon as you plant, and then just repeat it on a regular basis to keep the angular leaf spot at bay. I have not personally had to deal with this. I have much more experience with the bacterial wilt. But if it's a copper based spray, it's the same thing that we use for our tomatoes, which is also preventing bacterial diseases. So I I do have experience using that. And I can tell you, the earlier you start, the better off you are. And again, you can use disease resistant cucumber varieties.

Karin Velez [00:16:57]:

One of my favorite is Diva. Diva is very crisp, very tender, very sweet. It is very resistant to powdery mildew, and it is also parthenocarpic, meaning it does not need a pollinator in order to produce fruit. So they're all female flowers, and they all produce fruit without pollination, which means that if you are having an issue with cucumber beetles and you're trying to avoid that bacterial wilt, that you can plant diva cucumbers and you can immediately cover them with insect netting. And you do not have to take that insect netting off when they start blooming because they don't need the pollinators. So you can keep the cucumber beetles out of the growing area the entire season, only opening it up in order to go in and harvest and weed and do whatever you need to as far trellising and then covering it right back up again. So that is my go to variety. Another one that I know of is sweet success that is also really good for preventing or resisting, powdery mildew and downy mildew.

Karin Velez [00:18:02]:

So, and again, the other thing that you wanna make sure that you're doing is removing any diseased plants or plant debris out of that garden area so that it doesn't continue to spread once you actually have them. And of course, if you've had problems with some of these diseases before and you have enough room to be able to rotate your crops so that you can avoid planting cucumbers in the same spot every single year or anything else in the cucurbit family, actually, then that will help. But I understand that that's not possible for a lot of people. So, these other things that I talked about are probably gonna be your best bet.

Karin Velez [00:18:39]:

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Karin Velez [00:19:35]:

So sometimes what we're seeing in our cucumbers is actually something that is being caused by a nutrient deficiency. Plant growth, yellowing of the leaves, definitely a reduced yield. So plant growth, yellowing of the leaves, definitely a reduced yield. So if you see yellowing leaves and stunted growth, this usually means that there hasn't been enough nitrogen. This is especially important in the early growth stages. Potassium deficiency will cause yellowing and browning of the leaf edges. And then magnesium, you get what we call an interveinal chlorosis, which is a yellowing in between the leaf veins. The leaf veins are gonna continue to be green, but then the center part of it turns yellow. My recommendation is always conduct a soil test before you start planting. Every every season, conduct a soil test because you have no idea what's going on, and make sure that you are continually amending the soil. Anytime you can amend with compost and other organic matter, the better, obviously, is going to help with the nutrient levels, but it's also helping with the drainage. It's and and most of our garden plants like a high level of organic matter in the soil.

Karin Velez [00:20:50]:

So that's just gonna go for healthy plants anyway. Plus, cucumbers are heavy feeders. So if you have any question at all about how fertile your soil is at the beginning of the season, you might want to continue to apply some sort of a of a soil amendment or a plant food of some sort, especially during the growing season to help prevent any of these sort of nutrient deficiencies from rearing their ugly head. Sometimes some of these deficiencies will look like your plant has a disease or something else going on. So it's very important to look closely at the plant. When you start having problems and you see color changes, saying something that's got yellowing leaves is a very broad statement. You wanna look very closely. Is it the entire leaf? Is it just in between the veins? Is it just around the edges? And then go and look for those symptoms.

Karin Velez [00:21:46]:

I will link to an article that I have on the website in the show notes that gives you very specific information about what to look for for each of these deficiencies. And so you can use that as a guide to figure out whether or not it is a nutrient deficiency that you are dealing with or something else.

Karin Velez [00:23:03]:

And that something else could be as simple as root rot. So it has been a very wet spring here for us, which I am not complaining about at all. I would much rather have too much rain than not enough because a drought is even worse. But excessive rainfall or overwatering can lead to root rot in your cucumber plants. They don't tend to have super deep roots, and so number 1, if you are watering them too much, you're not encouraging those roots to go down into the soil to look for water. So that water is going to evaporate off the top, and those roots are gonna kinda try to to stay closer to the top, which also leads leaves them more open to damage. But the other thing is if you're watering too much, there is a fungal disease that causes the roots to decay. And basically, under the soil, you're not gonna know what's happening, and all of a sudden your plants are going to wilt and they're gonna die.

Karin Velez [00:23:59]:

So just like all of our other garden plants that I recommend this with, it is especially important to water cucumbers very deeply, but very infrequently. So, less frequent, more thorough waterings. That's always what we wanna go for. So you want that ground saturated to the point where at the 4 to 6 inch mark, that's where it's damp, and it doesn't get watered again until it is dry at about the 3 inch mark. That is encouraging those roots to go down into the soil and be able to look for that water, and also meaning that it's not going to evaporate as quickly off of the top. Generally speaking, we're aiming for about 1 to 2 inches of water per week, but we're gonna adjust that based on our weather conditions. So don't just put on your automatic timer and let it go because you might be overwatering, and that's what causes the root rot. You also want to make sure that you have very well draining soil.

Karin Velez [00:24:51]:

So that organic matter that we talked about, like compost, is going to help with this because the more organic matter we have in there, the better draining our soil is. If your soil isn't fantastic, and you need a little help in this area, well, then you can mound up the soil. That is why it's often suggested to grow cucumbers in mounds because this helps improve the drainage. And then, of course, mulch. Put mulch around the base of plants because this is going to retain that moisture. It's also gonna prevent the soil splashing, which is gonna help, you know, prevent those soil borne diseases. But it's also gonna retain that moisture, I mean, make that where you don't have to water as frequently. And so you're going to avoid that overwatering, and therefore, avoid the root rot.

Karin Velez [00:25:37]:

And then finally, we do need to pay attention to environmental stresses. Cucumbers are kinda sensitive. And if you've got extreme temperatures going on or if there's poor pollination, there are different effects that this can have on our cucumbers. So cucumbers prefer temperatures between about 70 85 Fahrenheit. So like my friends who are in the West Coast of the US right now, and you've got this heat event going on. If you can protect your plants from extreme heat by providing shade or even by using row covers that are open on the sides, then that is going to help because high heat can cause the blossoms to drop off, which means no fruit. But if they do produce fruit, it can also cause sunscald, especially if you don't have a very heavy leaf canopy. On the opposite end of this, if it's too cool, this is going to slow the growth.

Karin Velez [00:26:35]:

So you want to avoid planting your cucumbers too early in the spring because, well, first of all, you don't want them exposed to frost because that's a quick they'll be done. But also, if the soil is too cold, it's going to shock them and cause them to get off to a much slower start, and a lot of the time, they will not bounce back from that. So air temperatures between 70 85 are what are preferred for cucumbers. The soil temperatures obviously need to be at about 65 or above before you even plant, and this will help them, protect them from sort of extreme temperature swings. If you can mulch heavily, this is also going to help because a lot of the physiological reactions that happen in our plants actually are based on the root temperatures, so the soil temperature. So if you can mulch, you know, with 3 inches of straw to help keep that soil more cool, then your plants will be better off. Now, if you have experienced really funky looking fruits in your cucumbers, you you know the ones I'm talking about, they're either really skinny at the bottom or kinda wonky shaped, or they're burnt they're turned or whatever. There are all kinds of reasons for this.

Karin Velez [00:27:43]:

Number 1 is poor pollination. So this is probably the most common reason for misshapen fruits, and it will also just reduce your overall yield. So, of course, we're always wanting to plant things nearby that are going to encourage the pollinators to come in, and we don't wanna use any pesticides that are gonna harm the bees or the pollinators. That being said, things that can slow down pollination is extreme heat, because the pollinators are much less active, or very high humidity because that makes the pollen sticky, and heavy, and less easy for the pollinators to transfer. So if you see that you're getting these sort of weird, wonky cucumbers with the end on them that's kinda skinny, then you might need to be hand pollinating, which is actually very easy. You can just take a tiny little paintbrush and, you know, from one flower to the other, or you can just rub the flowers together, and that's enough to get you some pollination. You can improve the flowering conditions a little bit by making sure that you're getting them adequate water, but not too much. Let's see back to our our root rot problem there.

Karin Velez [00:28:53]:

And also make sure that they have the best nutrients that they can get in order to promote that healthy flower development. In this instance, we wanna make sure that there's not an excessive amount of nitrogen. Because if we think about what nitrogen does, it wants to create foliage, right? That's for green growth. Well, if you have too much nitrogen for your cucumbers, that's gonna lead to really lush foliage, and that is gonna happen at the expense of flower production. So we either want equal amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium when we're feeding these plants, or we wanna have a higher phosphorus, that middle number of your, fertilizer to encourage the flowering and the fruiting. The other reason we might have curved fruit is because cucumber fruits are very sensitive to obstructions. So if you are growing your cucumbers on the ground, and as they start to get larger, they sort of bump into something, and that could be a root, that could be the stem of its own plant, it could be a rock that's in the garden, whatever it is, they seem to immediately go, and they start to curve. And that's where you will get these these fruits that sort of end up growing like in a u shape.

Karin Velez [00:30:11]:

So if you're using trellises or cages to get them up off the ground, that is going to help prevent those misshapen fruits. It's also gonna help, you know, improve the air circulation. It's gonna reduce your disease risk. It's gonna make harvesting easier. So I absolutely encourage if you can grow up, that's going to actually help with a lot of the problems that we're having here, and it's gonna make it easier for you to be able to pick them. But it definitely will help prevent some of that curved fruit. Not all of it, but most of it. And then that curved fruit can also be a result of inconsistent watering.

Karin Velez [00:30:46]:

So if you got a lot of water early on, but then at the very end, it's not getting as much water. I mean, how much I can't remember what percentage of water cucumber actually is. I think it's in the 90 percentile. So if you've got something that's 90% water, then yes, the amount of water that it gets when it's forming those fruit is actually going to make a very big difference in the shape of that fruit. So if you can get consistent water to them, then you're going to be better off and you have more of a chance of getting these nice perfectly straight fruit. Not that that necessarily matters. They're still gonna taste really good. I mean, I'm a cucumber fanatic.

Karin Velez [00:31:25]:

I will eat them no matter how wonky they are, and that includes those ones that didn't get pollinated properly. They're perfectly fine. They're just not as pretty. That's okay. So one final reason why we might have problems with cucumbers actually occurs after harvesting, and that is that maybe they're just not lasting as long in the fridge or on the counter as you think they should, and they're going soft too quickly. Part of this is because harvesting cucumbers at the right time, and then also how we handle them after we have picked them and how we store them is actually kind of important so that they don't go soft. So we wanna make sure that we are picking the cucumbers when they are firm and green, but before they turn yellow, unless you are specifically trying to make sour pickles, which the old timers will always let them go yellow first before they go ahead and do that. Okay, fine, that's one thing.

Karin Velez [00:32:21]:

But when you just want regular you know, pickling cucumbers or slicing cucumbers, you wanna make sure that they are firm and green, and you do this by making sure that you are harvesting very regularly. Here's a fun fact for you. Cucumbers will increase in size by 50% every 24 hours. Okay. So think about that for a second. How many times have you gone out into the garden and you've looked at the cucumber and gone, I think that needs about another day. And then you don't get out there the next day, it's 2 days, and all of a sudden you have a cucumber that's like the size of your arm. That's why.

Karin Velez [00:32:58]:

50% every 24 hours. So when they're itty bitty, that might not be much. But when they're already, you know, 6 or 8 inches long, well, now it does make a big difference. So for pickling cucumbers, you wanna harvest them when they're about 2 to 4 inches long. For your slicing varieties, you wanna aim for about that 6 to 8 inch range. And when you got that kind of middle frame between the 4 inches and the 6 inches, they're actually pretty multipurpose. I pick them at that size all the time, because I know that if I don't get back out there again, it's probably gonna be too big by the time I go back out. So just make sure that you are doing your harvests fairly regularly.

Karin Velez [00:33:34]:

You're checking every day or 2 to see whether or not they're ready. And the bonus to this is that regular harvesting actually encourages more fruit production. So you're actually keeping your plants healthier by making sure that you're picking them frequently. When it comes to storing your cucumbers, they like a cool humid environment, but maybe not the coldest place in the fridge because they can get cold damaged. So if your crisper drawer has one of those flip down drawers or the flip down fronts at the front of it that's closer to the main door of the refrigerator, that probably works pretty well. But the actual drawer itself tends to be too cold for them depending on the fridge model, especially if you've got one of those bottom freezers, so it gets a lot colder down there. You might be actually damaging the fruit. The top shelf is actually a great place.

Karin Velez [00:35:29]:

It's actually one of the warmer spots in the refrigerator. And so if you wrap your cucumbers up in a paper towel before you put them in a plastic bag and you put them on the top shelf, they should last for you at least a week in, like, pristine condition and still be nice and crisp. After that, they might start to get a little bit soft, but they're still good for slicing into salads and stuff. You do want to avoid though storing your cucumbers with anything that produces ethylene, so apples or bananas, because this is going to cause them to spoil faster. Hopefully, this information will help you head off any problems with your cucumbers in the garden this year, or at least let you know what it is you're dealing with when something weird does rear its head. Until next time, my gardening friends. Keep on cultivating that dream garden, and we'll talk again soon.