A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2006 Cucumber leaves?

Hello all,

I have 3 cucumber plants I started from seed this spring in a 3 gallon pot I filled with bagged "topsoil" from the local farm store. plants sprouted and have been growing great for the past 2 months. They just started to get flowers a few days ago

Now my question- For the past week and half the leaves have been slowly getting yellow by the starting point(where they come out of the dirt) and slowly radiating out from the pot. The ones that were now closest to the root are dead and gone. Every day a few more that are next in line start to turn yellow. I can find no bugs on any side of the leaf or on vine. I tried cutting back on watering thinking maybe I was doing it to much but I still haven't gotten any different results.

Any thoughts? Oh yeah its the "Straight 8" style of cuke?

same cukes i got. And your very near the same lattitude i have too here in michigan. I'd ask you if your fertilizing at all? I use Espoma Brand fertilizer for my garden. I put this on all plants, and everything is doing wonderful (despite being attacked by squash bugs a week ago.

My next question, and someone can followup on this one, is that i think 3 gallon bucket might be too little for cucumber plants? My plants will crawl up about 2.5' tall and have a circular base of 3 or so feet. I know for sure the roots go at least this becuz i can see them on the topsoil. Maybe the plant is rootbound? Just a food for thaught thing.

Last of all. . cukes LOVE water. I was watering mine the same amount as all my other plants. . . just keeping the soil moist. I was having ill looking cucumbers, and they were taking a long while to produce. I read on here that cukes abnormally LOVE water, and i begin to water almost 2x as much as i was before! I have great turnouts on cukes, and am picking 4-7 of them on a 3 day basis!

Good luck and let us know a lil more information! I havent yet OVERwatered my cucumbers. . . they seem to love every drop i give them! (fert every 2 weeks too! with that espoma stuff)

I would say that they may need fertilizer, but go easy since they are in a 3 gallon pot. I agree about the water mine get more water then anything else in the garden and they love it. That may be why I have more cukes then I can use

I was fertlizing them and all my other vegatbles once a week with the Mircle Grow formulated for tomatoes(it said it was okay for use with all vegies). I believe the #'s are 18-18-21. I ran out of it back around the 4th of July and just have not bought any more fertilzer since.

But I have continued water all my plants daily in the evening after work. The tomatoes & green bell peppers in containers are doing great. I have some potatoes and pumpkin vines planted right in the ground and they are doing good too. Thats why this cucumber dilema has me baffled. And its consistent between all 3 vines.

I keep the same schedule with all of them. I think I should take your advice and give them more water-I'll start watering the cukes in the morning too and see what happens.

I found a local supplier of the Espom Brand fertilzer and give that a try too. Thanks for the tips! They are so close to growing cukes I hate to see them fizzle out after all this time. I'll keep you posted on what happens.

Andy

i'm still leaning on them being rootbound. I'm not SURE of it. . but it sounds like a logical theory. . . try xplanting it into a 5 gallon maybe? Up to you. . good luck either way!

and FYI that espoma stuff ROX!

I have grown many varieties of cukes over the years. I find the plants don't have longer than a seventy day life span, even when you can keep cucumber beetles and squash bugs at bay with sevin.

As a suggestion for a variety to grow, my favorite is Bush Pickle. The plants seem to resist disease and keep green leaves longer than others. They are also incredibly prolific with the cuke production on compact vines.


My current crop of two Bush Pickles I planted on may 15th and I have beem picking 5-6 cuccumbers for the last two weeks every other day.

Danno I think you were right! I just got in from transplanting the cucumber pot to my yard. I debated for a while on what to do. I kept it well watered but I noticed today that the yellow leaves were slowly coming about again. I dug a hole slide the pot over to it and tried to slide the whole root/dirt ball into the hole. It kind of crumbled apart on the way so I didn't get the vines turned a 100% vertical like they were in the pot but the bases are still buried at least. It was one big jumble of roots alright! I had no idea cukes had such a root system. Lesson learned. I've been killing a large rectangle of grass on the southwest corner of my yard. In preparation for next year. So I can ditch a lot of my containers and just plant right in the ground.