23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
Like any other veggies, cucumbers have also special requirements and tuning. The hardest part is getting them established. After that , they need regular watering. But cucumber leaves and vines are not very tolerant of mishandling while harvesting, trellising, .... The leaves can get injured easily.
But the GOOD part is that you do not have to wait for weeks and months to enjoy its fruit. The earliest tomato takes over 50 days from flower to ripe fruit. With cucumber it will take less than one week.
My cucumbers flourished until we had a heat wave (107 degrees - I thought the thermometer was broken and nor reading right, but that was the temp at the official recording stations). After that they were so bitter that they were inedible. Before that, they tasted better than any cuke I had ever eaten (not exaggerating here). Did some research on the A & M horticulture website - learned that once a fruit becomes bitter, all subsequent fruits are ruined (some kind of chemical messenger thing in the vine). Perhaps that really big cucumber you found sent out similar messages to the rest of the vine.
It depends a great deal on your location as to what works best. There is no "one size fits all".
In your zone protecting the crowns from frost and snow damage with a thick layer of mulch likely isn't required. In colder zones it surely would be. In your zone gus beetles could easily survive under the mulch and over-winter. In the colder zones they couldn't.
So the correlation isn't "mulch equals beetles" but more "no killing freeze equals beetles".
And of course some mulches work better than others. Compost or a layer of leaf mold would be much less hospitable to them than a layer of chopped leaves simply because leaf mold doesn't pack down like chopped leaves do.
Why not use your leaf chopper to make a big pile of chopped leaves to decay over the winter and have a big pile of leaf mold for next spring's garden instead.
The main thing is to get them fed.
Dave
Sorry, Dave, I'm not following!
Should I mulch the gus, or make better compost and feed it later?
I'm not quite understanding your post.
Also, should I spread composted chicken sh** (bagged) in the fall to feed the gus throughout the winter?
Nancy
A Follow up:
All the patients survived the emergency surgery. After I stomped on the worms, I covered the stems with leaf gro- a local awesome compost- as that is all I had on hand, and figured what the heck.
All of the plants are thriving and growing huge- and blooming- no squashes at all yet, however. I would have thought I would see some by now.
Thanks for the help.
I assume you have already explored much of the online resources on Mexico gardening and even tho Cozumel has a very different environment much it might still apply?
And that you know that since importing seeds and plants is going to be heavily restricted by customs you may be dependent on what seed crops you can find locally. Corn obviously, local varieties of dried beans, peppers, tomatoes, and squash.
I'd also suggest contacting the various universities that have agricultural programs for information on irrigation needs, fertilizers, planting dates, etc.
I did find one publication titled "VEGETABLE GARDENING IN
THE CARIBBEAN AREA" I linked below (although it is dated 1967). Be patient, it takes forever to load.
Good luck with your project.
Dave
Here is a link that might be useful: Vegetable Gardening in the Caribbean
If it is limestone, it is basically the same mother rock as Yucatan, so take a ferry and go look at the markets and buy seeds on the mainland. Not sure how close a seed store will be, the area is a tourist trap, but there are numerous villages on the road to Merida, you should not have to travel far. On top of what Dave suggests, chayote, malabar spinach, amaranth, eggplant, sweet potato, okra, watermelon and melon should all be available and easy, some in the rainy season, some in the dry season.
I use basic shop lights, as well. One alternative to hanging them from the ceiling is to mount them on an open shelving unit. I repurposed a set of 3' wide sturdy plastic shelves that I'd originally used to store kid toys by setting a 4' piece of 2x4 across the top and attaching hooks to the bottom of the 2x4. The 4' shop lights hang on a very short chain from the hooks so that the top surface of the lights is just under the top shelf. (Think of a sandwich - wood on top, top shelf in the middle, lights below. The shelves are an open weave so there is plenty of air-flow.)
With this set-up, I don't adjust the lights up and down as the plants grow -- I adjust the seedling trays up or down by stacking books, shoe boxes, etc., under them. As the seedlings grow, I remove a book from the stack to keep them a couple inches below the lights.
This isn't a high-volume operation; it's easy to run out of space in late spring when everything is getting big. But it's quite space-efficient. The shelves fit easily in a corner of my dining room. Add a small fan and a timer and it's pretty low maintenance.
Incidentally, you can buy smaller all-in-one set-ups like you describe online and they look very cool. But they are very expensive and you can't fit very many plants at one time. For comparison, mine was less than $50 -- a basic shop light fixture, one cool & one warm bulb (not fancy grow lights), a couple strong hooks, and a timer, plus scrap wood from my garage and existing shelves.
This post was edited by kathyb912_IN on Thu, Jul 25, 13 at 18:10
Nice little setup lilydude.
Uscjusto: I do it sort of like kathyb. I have some book shelves in an insulated room in the garage(not too cold or hot ambient temps). I bought a cheap fluoro unit and a couple "daylight" bulbs from Home depot for $30 or so. Attached the chains to the bottom of one shelf and I do the book "roulette" thing like kathyb does on another shelf below the top one. It's easier to do the book thing since not all veggies grow at the same height and rate.
Kevin
Sprayed all my squash again with the Neem. Really want to get back on top of this powdery mildew stuff. Already today the squash look so much better than they did on Monday when I last sprayed them. So today being Friday that means 4 days in between sprayings. Now I should be able to go back to weekly spraying. Actually I would like to keep to a spray in just under a week. That should work well.
I had to wait until late in the day, I just came in from spraying. Not that it is hot. I could have sprayed in the middle of the day as temps are really mild. But the bees were out all over the squash all day. Lots and lots of honeybees. I don't honestly know what they were doing but they were at it ALL day. Not in the flowers, they were landing under the leaves and then looking like they were eating or vacuuming along under the leaves. And only on the leaves that had powdery mildew. How really strange. I guess eventually they had enough and went home or it just got late.
I was using my battery powered wand sprayer again. Found a spray setting that works really well and the spraying didn't take as long to do this time as it did the first time I used the sprayer.
I don't intentionally tressil any of my heavy vines, but they always climb my fence. When they do I "sling" them with really cheap knee high panty hose. I slip the fruit in the sock and tie the to to the fence. The panty hose expand with the growing squash or melon and I have yet to have one tear open. I started doing this with ones that had runs in them when I needed a quick sling, now I buy a pack at the store every year just for this purpose.
Ye, sorry. Link below is to same question from earlier in the week with more info.
Dave
Here is a link that might be useful: To late to plant corn?
I did see a few insects that looked like red ladybugs but moved faster a week or so ago. Trying to remember if they were on the beans or something else, but I'm sure it was somewhere down in that 3000sf area (or the edamame just across the road from it). Not sure if it was Mexican bean beetle or bean leaf beetle. I haven't seen any eggs or larvae.
http://extension.entm.purdue.edu/fieldcropsipm/insects/bean-leaf-beetle.php
Raining right now, but maybe I can get out to spray this afternoon. Rain expected Sunday too.
Here is a link that might be useful: Mexican bean beetle
@uscjusto nothing strange about it. There's always that one post from the "holier than thou" person.
I don't see that as "holier than thou". I was wondering about such a quick move myself? Usually you have a minimum of 30 days, and usually you know ahead of that time.
I haven't rented for a long time, but most of those rules are the same, unless you get a 3 day eviction notice. Nancy
pumpkin vines send out a lot of roots from the leaf nodes, as long as you let them grow on the ground and there is dirt underneath the vines. if so there are probably many additional roots that have formed, so they should be fine.
I've had many plants keep growing and produce even though they've been mostly cut off from the main stem (due to SVB damage)
Well that's reassuring because I'm currently watching mine.. It's been tore up bad by them, but somehow it still has half it's leaves that are green and perky.