I Wish I Knew THIS Before Growing Cucumbers

What's going on growers? It's James Vigioni coming to you live from Jersey. You might be killing your cucumber plants. Today I'm going to share with you five mistakes you cannot afford to make when growing cucumbers. Let's go! Let's jump right into it with the first mistake you cannot afford to make and it's allowing the cucumber beetles to decimate your plants when they're young. The cucumber beetles will not only feed on your plants but they'll also spread diseases like bacterial wilt from one plant to the next. There are a few things you can do right now to combat the attack of the dreaded cucumber beetle. The easiest and smartest thing to do in my opinion is to plant some varieties that are burpless. Varieties like the Bait Alpha. These ones have low levels of cucurbitacin. This is a chemical compound found in cucumbers that makes them bitter. It's also the same chemical compound that draws in the cucumber beetles. So if we plant some varieties that have low levels of cucurbitacin then they're going to be less attractive to the cucumber beetle and that's going to make it a lot better for our plants. Some of my favorite varieties of cucumber that are burpless, that are non-bitter ones are the Suyolong, the Tendergreen and the Socrates. Another thing you could do to protect your plants from the cucumber beetles is to use an insect netting on your plants when they're young. That's when they're the most susceptible. Just make sure that when your plants start to flower that you remove that insect netting. This way the bees can come in and pollinate your plants. Or you can go around and pollinate the flowers by hand. And if you don't want to do that there's a whole other option where you could plant some varieties of cucumbers that are actually self-pollinating. A variety like the Bait Alpha and also the China Jade. You don't even need to remove the insect nettings because these things pollinate themselves. The other way I protect my plants especially in a spot where it's hard for me to cover them with an insect netting is I use surround kaolin clay on my young plants. I spray it on them. This is an organic spray made of just clay and it's super super fine. So we spray this on our plants and it really discourages the cucumber beetles because if the cucumber beetles try to go after our plants then what the clay does is it kind of gums up their sensory organs. Messes up with their like antenna, their mouth parts. So they have a tough time actually even finding the plants. This clay is also said to mask where the plants are. So when you spray your plants with it like I mentioned earlier it kind of gums up those sensory organs for the cucumber beetles. So it kind of makes it hard for them to even find the plants. If they do find the plants and go for a bite of those leaves they're going to end up with a mouthful of clay. A few other things you can do to avoid the cucumber beetle is you can plant some trap crops. A good option is radish. You can plant radishes relatively close to your cucumber beetles. What that will do is it will lure the cucumber beetles away and they'll go after your radishes instead of going after your cucumbers. What I have been doing for years is planting amaranth next to my cucumbers and it seems like the cucumber beetles prefer to go for the amaranth over my cucumber plants and that's exactly what I want. I also suggest that you plant another round of cucumbers later in the season when the cucumber beetles are less prevalent. This way you don't have to even avoid or deal with them as much. You can kind of just, you know, they're not around as much so it's much easier when you don't have to think about the cucumber beetles. I suggest that you always have that second round ready to go into the ground. This way you're, you know, safe. You have a little bit of insurance knowing you have some more plants. If you use any of these or all of these suggestions together it will help you dramatically and without having to deal with cucumber beetles it will make it so your plants not only grow healthier but they produce a lot more. The second mistake you cannot afford to make is allowing your cucumbers to over ripen on the vine. If you allow even one cucumber to fully mature on the vine then the whole vine will quit producing. The main focus of a cucumber plant isn't to produce a lot of fruit. It's to produce viable seed for offspring for the next year. If you allow your cucumber plant to transition from the production of fruits and flowers over to the ripening of seed then the whole vine will stop producing. You'll essentially be killing your cucumber plant because it will stop producing, you know, for the whole year. That's it. That's the end of the cucumber vine essentially. It will only focus on ripening that seed. But if you go out there regularly and pick your cucumbers while they're small then the plant will keep kicking out more and more and more fruit. So to put it simply by going out there early and often and picking regularly you will get larger harvests and plants that won't stop producing up until the frost as long as they're healthy. So remember get out there early and often because the more you pick the more you get. The Cucumbers are 95% water which means they need an adequate level of moisture in order to perform well. Cucumbers that don't get enough water oftentimes are misshapen, they're tasteless, and thirsty plants can even slow down in production, stop growing, or potentially even die off. When your cucumbers start to get into heavy production and they start loading up with cucumbers you need to make sure you go out there and give them a nice deep watering. It's also a good idea to add some organic mulch. This way you can help retain that moisture in the soil and the mulch will also help to keep the soil at a good consistent temperature which is a lot better for the roots. What you don't want to happen is your cucumber vines to completely dry out the roots and then to come in with a heavy watering. That uneven watering is stressful on the plant and that's also what causes some misshapen tasteless cucumbers. So it's a really good idea to make sure that you always get a nice thick mulch down. Another thing is if possible whenever you're watering you want to water at the base and do whatever you can to keep the leaves dry. When the cucumber leaves are wet they have a much higher chance of getting disease issues and that's the last thing we want because disease is just spread once they take hold on the plant. So get out there water your cucumbers from the base get it mulched down and make sure that you're providing them adequate moisture when they start producing. Again cucumbers are 95% water they need a lot to produce well. The fourth mistake you cannot afford to make is allowing your cucumbers to sprawl along the ground instead of growing them up a trellis. When you grow cucumbers up a trellis they'll have better access to light and they'll get better airflow. These two things are the enemy of disease. Another thing is when you grow them up a trellis it makes it easier to go down there and water your plants at the base without getting the leaves wet which is important. An additional thing is when you're trellising your cucumbers it's easier to come out and manage the cucumber plants and also see if any cucumbers need to be picked. This way none over ripen on the vine and you don't cause your cucumber plant to stop producing just because you let a cucumber over ripen. If you let your cucumbers sprawl along the ground they have a higher chance of getting disease issues because those leaves could be in contact with the soil. In the soil there are soil-borne organisms that and diseases that can infect your plants so it's better to get them up off the ground. If you want your plants to sprawl on the ground just make sure you get a thick mulch down something like wood chips works good or even like a black plastic. Basically you just don't want the leaves of your cucumbers to be in contact with the dirt that's where all the problems are. You don't want the rain coming hitting the ground splashing up dirt and getting that on your leaves that will just spread diseases around. Another great thing about growing cucumbers up trellises is that you can get a higher yield in a smaller amount of space. Because we're growing those cucumbers vertical we're getting that extra vertical space. We can grow the cucumbers a lot closer together and plant them a lot denser. If you let them sprawl they may take up a few feet. What I like to do with some of my cucumbers is to grow them the same way I grow my tomatoes. I'll grow them up a string and then prune them just like you would a tomato plant. This allows me to grow them really close together and get that vertical space I'm using. It makes it so I can grow them in a high intense style and get a high level of production simply by growing them up a trellis. The fifth mistake is probably the most common one especially when it comes to new gardeners and it's planting out your cucumbers too early. Cucumbers you do not want to transplant into the garden until at least three to four weeks after your last expected frost date. Young cucumber plants hate the cold. They love the heat but they really do not like getting cold feet. Not only do you need the air temperature to be relatively warm in like the 60s or 70s before you get your cucumbers in, you also need the soil temperature to be warm. Like I said they hate having cold feet so it's always good to be patient when it comes to transplanting out your cucumbers. What we want is we want our cucumber plants to be put in the ground and then immediately immediately explode into growth. We don't want them just sitting and waiting. If you plant them out too early and it's not warm enough they will literally just sit there and wait for the weather to warm up. They won't grow much. They'll kind of just hang out. Potentially they'll even slow down growth, be stagnant and they might even start looking worse than when you first transplanted them in. So a lot of new gardeners think that planting things out earlier means earlier harvest but when it comes to cucumbers sometimes planting out too early can cause more harm than good. It just wouldn't be right if I didn't leave you with a few bonus tips. The first one is that you always need to make sure that you have more cucumber plants on deck ready to go into the especially once your cucumber vines start producing. The reason for this is say you have a cucumber vine and you're just not paying attention or one cucumber gets hidden behind some of the leaves and then it starts to ripen and that cucumber vine stops producing then you have another one on deck to replace it. Or if the cucumber beetles get really bad and they start just destroying a couple of your plants you can replace them if you have other ones growing on deck. It's simple to do but it's really effective to make sure you always have good healthy cucumbers going so you can keep those consistent harvests coming right down the pike. Another thing is you want to make sure that if you had some issues last year with say you know some disease issues that you plant some varieties this year that are resistant to the problems you had last year. For instance say bacterial wilt is your problem you could plant a variety that's resistant to bacterial wilt like the Shintoki Wah Long that is has good disease resistance to bacterial wilt. This way you don't have to deal with a problem you can kind of avoid it. Or just say something like powdery mildew is your problem you could plant a variety like the Socrates cucumber that one's resistant to powdery mildew. The only thing with the Socrates though is that thing is insanely expensive. They are a dollar a seed. They're selling a pack on like Johnny Seeds I think for like 30 seeds for $32. I mean a dollar a seed is super expensive but I've grown the Socrates. It's an amazing cucumber. It happens to be one of my favorite cucumbers. So I do suggest you try it out but I'm telling you the seeds they're just not cheap at all. If you want to try your hand at growing the Socrates I would suggest starting them in some cells. This way you know that you can kind of protect your plant. What you don't want to happen is what happened to me in the past. The birds and the critters came after some of my stuff. I started a whole tray of cucumbers. Brought them outside to let them harden off a little bit. Then what happened is the birds came and they started picking at all my cucumbers. They pretty much decimated a whole tray of cucumbers for me. That was a little bit upsetting especially because I had some Socrates in there. But what I do now is when I am taking my cucumbers and hardening them off or if I'm starting them outside in cells I make sure to have an insect netting covering over my plants. This way nothing can get out there and just destroy my plants because it really stinks when you spend the time to get them started. Another thing you cannot forget to do is to make sure that you harden your plants off before you actually transplant them into the garden. Think about it. You started your cucumber seeds inside. You timed them just right. Then they sprouted. They're in the cells and what you don't want to do is just take that and directly transplant it into the garden. You first need to bring your young plants in cells outside and acclimate them to the outdoor conditions. The way to do this is the first day or so bring them out for an hour and then in the shade and then bring them back in. The next day bring them out for a few hours. Do that over like a week process of bringing them out then bringing them back in. Your plants should be able to spend by the end of the week outside for 24 hours without showing any negative side effects. At this point your plants are hardened off and can now be transplanted into the garden. Growing cucumbers isn't the easiest thing ever but if you stay on top of some of the basics then it will help things in general. A really important thing like I talked about earlier was that new gardeners they just plant cucumbers out too early. What I suggest you do this year if you haven't in the past is make sure you record in your own garden journal when you start your cucumber seeds, when you harden them off, when you transplant them out. What this will do is it will help guide you in the future to give you really you know good accurate timing because when it comes to cucumbers that's really one of the hardest parts is is getting a good idea of exactly when to plant them. This way you're not too early and it's not too cold out or you're not too late and the intense heat has already come and your cucumbers can't like take that heat in and grow and produce. So when it comes down to it a little simple thing like a journal can make a big difference in your garden. The amount of cucumbers that I harvested last year was insane. There were even more than I knew what to do with. There's nothing better than going out there and grabbing some fresh cucumbers right off the vine. Tuck used to love snacking on the cukes too. I would grab one and all of a sudden he would just show up and want to get a delicious snack of it. The thing is when you grow food this delicious everything wants a piece of it so you need to stay on top of protecting all your food in the garden. Another thing that I love to do is I like to plant some of my cucumbers right in front of my peas as they're finishing. So right up here we've got some peas looking absolutely beautiful. As you'll notice look at the color of them they're just starting to fruit. You can see some of these little purple peas forming. What I do is as these peas begin to finish up and they're like on their way out and they're not really flowering much anymore I'll go by and I'll cut down the peas at the base. I won't pull the roots out but I'll cut them at the base. The reason I'll do this is because peas are legumes. They're nitrogen fixers. They take atmospheric nitrogen convert it and then store it on their roots as nodules. Then as we cut the peas down and they die off those nodules release nitrogen into the soil and then we plant our cucumbers in front of the peas. Then our cucumbers can tap into the nitrogen that was created from the peas. So it's like our peas can provide fertilizer for our cucumbers that go in after. I think it's a cool thing and it works really well. I've done it for a number of years and it's just a great way to get more out of one area. I want to show you a few things. One of them is the rainier cherry next to me. You got to see the size of this thing and how well it's producing at the moment. Here's our rainier cherry grown completely organically covered in fruit. There's much up here. Grab a couple cherries just from right here and I'm telling you home grown sweet cherries grown organically. There's literally nothing like it. Let me get just a quick taste of one. So sweet. So sweet. So juicy. They're like mini plums but even better. Take a look down here. You'll notice a good way to save space when growing in a raised bed is this right here is a plant your cucumbers at or melons at the corner of your raised bed. This way they can grow out trellis down the side and then when you have a thick wood chip mulch down you could let them sprawl on the ground because they won't be in contact with the dirt. Notice we need to cover this area just a little bit. So it's a good way to get more out of your bed. Take a peek down here too. The fruits just don't stop. We've got some strawberries right here fresh ready to be harvested. Look at them just at the corner of our raised bed here and the strawberries are everywhere. They're next to our raised beds. They're underneath our fruit trees like you see right here. We always love getting that double yield and I think it kind of helps a little bit when you have so much delicious things in the garden it can kind of protect your cucumbers. I mean when you're the pests what the heck do you even go after first? It's a true paradise for all living things. Let's section where I love planting some cucumbers that I grow up strings and then I trellis them up the string and then I prune them just like you would your tomatoes. The reason I love planting cucumbers in this bed is because this is a bed that's dominated by tomatoes. You'll notice a cool thing is that companions for tomatoes they share a lot of the same companions as cucumbers do. In this bed you'll see marigolds, we've got herbs, tomatoes, all different things that grow well with cucumbers. So we're essentially growing like a nice polyculture of different kinds of plants which makes it more confusing for the pests and allows us to get bigger harvests as a result. Last year I grew some cucumbers up a string in this pallet bed and one of them was the suyo long. I got some fantastic harvests from it. It's really cool when you prune your cucumbers in a style that I'm going to share with you. I've done a video about it in the past if you want to check it out but it's known as like umbrella trellising or at least that's what I call it. You essentially prune your cucumber to one single stem and then when it gets up top higher in the trellis you allow multiple suckers to grow and it and expands out from the top and almost hangs down like an umbrella then there's just fruit hanging from the top. So you get the advantage of growing up a string with better airflow, easier to water the bottom and less disease issues while also easier to harvest and you get big harvests because you're allowing some of those suckers and a bunch of tops to grow at the at the highest part of the plant and it just cascades down. It looks beautiful, it's fun to do and it's just a fun way to grow cucumbers. That's today's video growers. Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. I really hope you got a lot of value out of this video. I really think that if you use some of what I shared with you, if you avoid a lot of these mistakes then there's no reason you shouldn't have a high level of success. Cucumbers aren't super easy to grow consistently and well but they're one of the most rewarding and delicious crops in the summer. They're so cooling, they're so delicious, they come in some different shapes, sizes and some of them have a little bit of you know almost like sourness to them if you go for like the lemon cucumber. The dragon's egg has a really cool white color, cool shape to it, good flavor too. So there's a host of different kinds and I mean what's better than making pickles and stuff. I can never have too many cucumbers. If I do then I love sharing them with the neighbors and stuff because everyone loves cucumbers. I think, well I mean most people do. Overall they're one of my favorite things to grow so you guys got to get out there, you got to get them planted. But like I said it's not easy. Just make sure you get the basics right and then build off of that. Try some of the varieties I mentioned and try just some disease resistant varieties if it's something you had trouble with in the past. Simple things made big differences for me like making sure that I didn't plant too early, not allowing my plants to get root bound, hardening them off, transplanting at the right time, making sure that I put some fertilizer around my plants when I first planted them and then top dressing with fertilizer as the plants headed into production to make sure they can keep up that high level of production. Then just protect them from all the pests, stay on top of picking and your cucumber harvest should essentially never end until the frost comes. Yeah they'll slow down when it gets cooler but you still have plants that are flowering, that are producing fruit that you can continue to eat. Overall I had a blast out here. It's been a rainy day but you know what it's been a nice day. Take a quick pan around the food forest. Look how big everything has gotten, how healthy everything is, soaking up the rain. The size of these vegetables are unbelievable. We're grabbing some really delicious spring harvests as we start to prep for the summer garden and overall it's just it's just great. The tomatoes have shown such an insane amount of growth in such a short period of time and I'm happy with these. I've got so many different varieties and it looks like it's going to be a very very good year for tomatoes. Honestly so far as things have set up this year I don't think it's going to be as good of a year for cucumbers. At least early in the season it's just been a little wet and a little cool for cucumbers but for whatever reason the tomatoes look amazing. I'm hoping for really massive harvest when it comes to tomatoes this year so that's why it's also a great reason to plant a diverse number of crops. This way there's always something that gives you a bumper crop. There's always something that produces you know a buku amount of. I wanted to send a thank you to one of our new channel members Gardens Love. Thanks for being a part of Team Grow. Thanks for having your hand in everything we're doing out here. I also wanted to mention that we just dropped some of the new merch. If you guys like it grab one over at teamgrow.us. It's the I'd rather be gardening shirt. I thought it was a clever saying and I really like it and I was like you know what when I'm often out doing things I'm thinking to myself dang you know what I'd rather be gardening. That's just how it is. I also wanted to mention that you gotta check out the community over at teamgrow.us where we have over 2,000 members that have come together that we're working together pooling our knowledge pooling our resources and we're all working as a team to grow a better future together. That's the whole goal. That's the whole mission. I mean I don't even want to cut out this video because I'm having fun doing it but we'll be back to you guys with another one in a pretty short amount of time and we'll also come through in a short amount of time to give you a better update of the whole entire garden because week to week day to day there's so much progress. I'll be back to you with another one real soon. We out.