Hi, Everybody,
Springtime here, and I just put in some cucumber seedlings into 10-litre (2 and a half gal) buckets. Any suggestions on leaving them to wander on the surface, or supporting them?
One stake in the centre (tied with string), or three stakes around the edge, in a tripod form, with strings going between?
Thanks in advance!
I first grew cucumbers up the antenna mast when I was a kid. (Pre-cable, small town Indiana we needed a good sized tower to pull in television stations.)
Vertical growing is great. The tripod with strings sounds like the better idea.
Up is best. Tie or train to canes/mesh/whatever. If allowed to sprawl all over the ground the plant will take up way too much space, the cucumbers will be more accessible to slugs etc, and the cucumbers will have yellow areas where the sun hasn't got to them.
Don't ask how I know :-))
Steve
well, if you have borers, plenty of space, and no slugs, your vine will root more readily, be healthier and produce more if you leave it down. In my case, down is better. You can also feed 150 of your closest friends with the harvest.
Growing it on the ground will reduce the problem with borers? For real?
Penelope
In our AZ desert location, the hot winds and relentless sun tend to dry out the vines so letting them run free is best. But you need to put a board or some such thing under the cukes to keep them off the ground. Olin
Educate me if you will, what are these borers? Are they something we in UK know by a different name?
And incidentally, who has no slugs?
Steve
Squash vine borers
Very lucky people!
Penelope
more chances for the vine to root and survive the attack. And a vine that has rooted in several places is more productive than one that has only one set of roots. I had one this summer that rooted in five places. That was one cucumber factory.
Ahhhh, yes, that would make more sense. Thank you.
Penelope
In the dry part of my yard there are few slugs and many snakes, which means, after a while, no slugs. In the wetter part of my yard the slugs are exterminated by sluggo. If you let chickens into the garden for two weeks, there will be no slugs left.
Thanks for that. I just checked one of my books and it doesn't mention them, so I presume it's not a UK pest.
I think they're best left in Ohio.
Steve
Steve
What about lady bugs, lizards, white (eggs?) stuff on the bottom of leaves, black (eggs?) stuff on the bottom of leaves. There are a thousand lizards happily feeding on all sorts of things out there. I think I've got a lizard farm.
There are a good number of lady bugs out there (I think I've heard that there are lady bugs and something that looks like lady bugs). There are a few wasps buzzing around still. I'm in Tampa, Florida.
The cucumber vines seem to be doing quite well. The leaves seem to die after a couple months, and the vine continues to grow with fresh new leaves blooming at the far end of the vine.
I noticed one cucumber a couple months ago, was the first cucumber I grew, that developed a hole in the bottom of the cucumber. I pulled it off the vine at that time as I wasn't sure when to pull it off. I cut it open and didn't see any bugs inside... would that be a borer that dug about 1 to 2 inches into it, a nice tunnel?
And I'm curious if anyone knows anything about lady bugs (and the bug that's not a "lady" bug)?
A borer or pickleworm would have moved right in and made itself at home. How wide was the tunnel? If it was quite narrow, perhaps a wireworm (click beetle larva) did some exploring. If it was wider, maybe a slug spent some time working its way in before moving on.
Width was less than .5 cm, or in inches about 1/8" wide. The cuke was a foot or two off the ground, so not sure how a slug could have gotten to it, but I imagine that's possible. There are some small shelled snails outside but those seem to remain on the ground sticking to the bottoms of dead leaves and their shells are much bigger than the hole.
Looking through the wireworm picks, there are definitely some flying bugs out there that look similar. There are flying roaches, a few ladybugs(?), lizards all over the place (they love to eat all types of bugs). There are what appear to be some kind of bug eggs on the bottom of the leaves.
What do ladybugs eat? They seem to roam the tops or bottoms of the leaves. I'm wondering if that white egg looking stuff are ladybug eggs. The leaves are being eaten but nothing too devastating.
I love my lizards! Mine are all the anoles lizards, and it's so nice to sit on the front porch and watch them slipping through the flowers, or sending lizard signals to their compatriots.
Aphids and other small insects.
Penelope
That far off the ground it was maybe a slug or snail. They may spend the day sheltering under leaves, but they come out at night.
Thanks for the pics!
I witnessed alot of critters crawling today. They are ladybug larva! Asian ladybugs! I found a caterpillar on one of the leafs. And there are a lot of very small bugs not quite the size of the ladybug larva, about 1/20th in size. And I used to spritz the leaves with water to wash the eggs off thinking they'd be detrimental.
One of the larva I saw looked just like the Asian ladybug larva:
Some of the eggs are yellow like viewed at the ladybug site, some look like whiteflies. I had a problem with those over the summer. They practically destroyed a couple cucumber vines as well as tomato plants and maybe one other thing I planted that I didn't have any success with.
The egg link Penelope posted:
-- Jim Carlock Post replies to the newsgroup.
"Penelope Periwinkle" indicated: On Sat, 23 Oct 2004 13:36:31 GMT, "Jim Carlock" expressed:
I love my lizards! Mine are all the anoles lizards, and it's so nice to sit on the front porch and watch them slipping through the flowers, or sending lizard signals to their compatriots.
Penelope
-- "Maybe you'd like to ask the Wizard for a heart." "ElissaAnn"
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