Dave

1. Germinating the seeds inside the house in wet paper towels in ziploc freezer bags.

2. Dusting them with Seven dust at planting time ( this is the only time I use pesticides in the growing season).

3. Plant the sprouts under a tomato cage and train the vines up it. I had cukes until it snowed last year using the cage!

If your leaves get completely eaten off the stem at night, it's slugs/snails. They leave just the stem in tact and then the sprout dies. I use Sluggo for that. It's an iron based way to rid yourself of the midnight murderers of your seedlings.

I've had increasingly bad problems with cucumber beetles every year, and none of the vendors at my market is able to grow cukes at all. It's extremely frustrating.

Start your cucumber seedlings indoors and once you get them outside cover immediately, and leave covered until the plants have a number of flowers. The larger plants can better withstand feeding damage from cucumber beetles, but they are just as likely to get diseased. Succession plant cukes every few weeks and be prepared to remove diseased plants.

I'm experimenting this year with parthenocarpic varieties of cukes, that can be grown completely under cover. Some people on these forums hand pollinate, which is a bit advanced for me, but parthenocarpic seeds are so expensive (almost $1 per seed) that I may look into hand pollination. I used to plant cukes at the beginning of the season and without thinking about them I'd have cucumbers until frost. The cucumber beetles have gotten worse each year though, to the point where it's almost not worth the hassle of growing them.

Don't know what your summers are like, but I'll wait until mid July and start a few more cuke seeds so there will be fresh cukes for fall salads.