Cucumbers shriveling up

My cucumbers have baby cubes but the leaves are starting to dry up & die. Is it too hot for them? They are in the direct sun. Should I have waited & planted the seed now, so they would fruit later in the fall.

If they are wilting one vine at a time you might have bacterial wilt.It is spread by the striped cucumber beetle.

if you get it you are basically done. They will take a few days but the vines will all die and there is no treatment that I could find. After I got BW on one vine I started doing some research. I had tried to take advantage of my chain link fence and planted too close to trees. Something the beetles use for cover.

The most prevalent advice was to pull and remove the plant at first sign of the disease. There is a lot of data on the web.

I hope it is not BW.

It's definitley too hot for cukes where I'm at, so have to assume it's probably too hot in TX as well. The absolute latest I plant cukes is the first of March. I can plant again the first of August for a fall crop.

Since our weather is so unpredictable, I don't have much luck with standard cukes. It usually gets too hot too fast for them. I have better luck with Armenian cucumbers. We have been consisitently over 100° for a couple weeks now and the Armenians are still kicking out fruit. They were planted in late February, direct seeded.

Yes, one of vines dried up & died. The rest of the plant still looks good. I'll wait & see what happens. I have them planted close to the squash plants.Maybe that wasn't a good idea either.

Keep an eye on your squash. That is another striped cucumber beetle favorite. I have already found one on one of my squash. They are tough suckers. It took some stomping to kill the thing.

Locakelly,
I was going to ask....Because your temp zone is just a bit worse than what I have to deal with. Here in houston it gets to about 103, but half of my backyard is a stone patio and I really deal with temps to 115 or so for my poor plants in containers.

And believe me, the rest of my landscaped yard is doing great. my boxwoods, junipers, italian cypress, bottle brush, azaleas euryopsis "daisy"s , "heat wave" pentunias, crape myrtle trees, etc. etc....are doing great@!!!

But these thin leaved veggies are something else! Very fragile to the hot Texas sun.

Besides the Armenian cucumbers you mentioned,

What is your "best list" for the types of veggies that do well in the summer heat??
Any specifics for species type?

suitable for container growing....small spaces,


thanks for all your help on this forum!

organicfarm
!

Most anything can be grown in a container if it's large enough. Also, a large number of veggies have patio or container varieties. Most are hybrids so if you don't mind that you will have a lot more choices.

That reflected heat is sometimes worse than the actual sun itself. My veggie garden is in my backyard in a full on western exposure. My yard is also surrounded by a 6' block wall. I have to be careful what I plant near that wall because of the reflected heat. It helps in the winter though as that same walls holds heat and raised the temps ever so slightly when you need it to;o)

What I grow in the summer?

Eggplant, peppers, hot set and cherry tomatoes (sometimes they limp through though), melons (watermelon & cantaloupe), pumpkins, summer and winter squash, basil, okra (first time this year), popcorn and sweet potatoes. Green onions, mints, thyme and oregano also do ok through the summer with shade.

What I don't grow (yet) but can take the heat are yardlong beans, blackeye peas, sweet corn (the ants get more than I do) and tomatillos. I really should try tomatillos as I make a lot of salsas and green chile sauces that use them as a base.

Oh, and a plus side of sumemr gardening in the desert (is there really one?!?) is that we get so little rain that I really don't have to deal with all those fungal problems like powdery mildew!

Kelly

I'm in North Texas, but we still get hot and humid, and my cucumbers are going crazy! I think the key is making sure they get enough water and you plant them at the appropriate time so that their root system has a chance to get established before the heat really sets in. A few cool days every now and again and some rain every once in awhile also help tremendously.

This is my lemon cucumber end of the trellis this morning. These are the most prolific in my garden this year, but the White Wonders are catching up.

I only had l vine die. And it happened on a very,very, hot day. I had noticed all the leaves of my cucumber wilting. So I watered, & all the vines are o.k. except for that l vine which died. It looked burned to a crisp. Now, since I started watering a lot more, & we have had some rain & cloudy days, my cubes are fruiting nicely. It was diffinitely the hot sun scorching my cubes.

I know Im repeating my self but whenever I hear about plants drying up and dying I think Spider Mites. They love cucmber vines. Spraying with neem oil wil help, but not in the heat of the day. SMs also love beans. Is there a fine webbing on the plants, that would confirm SMs, but you don't have to see the webbing for it to be SMs. The rain will also help with SMs

Here in SoWest Kansas we have a harsh and brittle climate, with hot , drying winds and intense summer sun. Every year I'm discovering another crop that responds so well to 40% shade cloth. My cukes love the shade I've provided this year and saying "thank you" by growing more cukes and not dying off by July.( A first for me)

Yoshi: So when it gets really hot, like in July, you put up shade cloth? Is that like a small tent you make out of canvass. What other veggies benefit from this besides cucumber? Maybe tomatoe, green beans?

Also, does the shade cloth drop the temperature about l0 degrees. That would be good in this Texas heat.

I started my cucumbers kind of late, I hope they do okay in the heat! Its still not scorching hot in California so hopefully they will be okay.

Behillman, I put the shade cloth on around mid-June , but definetly by July. I started
shading my tomatoes several years ago and they looked so much 'happier' that year, rewarding me with a bumper crop. I decided my plants were little different than my animals--extra TLC ya' know.

As to my method of covering, my garden beds are raised 4x20 to which hubby has added pvc attached at the base and rounded over to other side. It isn't necessary to cover the fruit entirely with the cloth. You can purchase special pvc clips to attach the cloth.

A 10 degree heat reduction is probable, in the fall I exchange the shade cloth for for a row cover and get extra milege on my plants.

Oh-forgot to mention--no, I don't make the cover out of canvas. Gardening centers and places like Farmtec have shade cloth that is rated 10%, 20%,etc. all the way up to 90% ( which is the percentage I use for the goats summer shelter) Its not real cheap so I add every year as I can...My rhubarb really took off after shading it--going for the strawberries next year.