I promised Hudson_WY I'd post some pics of my cuke arbor and I finally found them. These pics are from last year, sadly this year I had such a horrible time with cucumber wilt they never really got off the ground. Last year was the first year we built it and they did phenomenally.

This is the arbor from a distance. It's approximately 10 feet high at the peak, 8 feet long and 8 feet wide. The side walls are about 4 foot tall. It's an EMT conduit frame with rolled livestock fencing attached to it with black zip ties. These zip ties are SO easy to use and ratched this fencing tight to the frame, much easier than using metal wires to secure it. They are plastic so eventually will degrade in the sun but this is year 2 and no replacing any yet. If any snap or need replacing they are cheap and quick to replace. This was not cheap to build but I had seen a similar one in a picture probably 15 years ago and always wanted to make one. The plus side though is that it should last a very long time, it's very sturdy, but light enough that two people can move it to another location if necessary which is what I wanted. I have 4 foot rebar pounded 2 feet into the ground that each corner of the structure is secured to. Extreme winds (and we get them with Southern thunderstorms) do not phase this puppy at all. The cukes eventually rambled up and over the top and down the other side of the roof. The vines were easily about 12 foot long. This was literally a house of cukes before the season was done.

Cukes hanging down through the roof

Pic of outside side wall

First harvest of the season....these were large cukes and we harvested several hundred just like them that year.

Here's a pic of my main vegetable garden area I have thrown in for good measure. Better Boy toms are in the background, along with red and green Bell Pepper plants, some Basil plants and petunias for a splash of color. I found that old farm implement in somebody's scrap metal trash pile. The cages are just typical concrete reinforcing wire.

Shot of the pepper plants, before they started setting fruit.

And finally my first attempt at a hoop house last winter. The bell peppers were still putting on quite a show when our first freeze hit so I erected this right over top of the two rows. I put a few 60 watt work lamps in there with them and it extended their life for another month on into December before the temps got too low. If I had switched to some 250 watt heat lamps they might have lived even longer. I just had to put the hoop house up this week to protect them when temps dipped down into the 20's. However they're warming right back up and will be in the mid to high 70's again tomorrow. I'm anxious to see how long this will keep them going this year, I upgraded to the heat lamp bulbs this time.

Thanks for looking
Danielle

Thanks again for the photos - keep up the good work!

I only planted what seedlings our big box stores had in the Spring, 4 Bonnie burpless hybrids on one side and 4 Straight Eights on the other. The side that got the early morning sun first grew faster in the beginning but once everything got going I honestly couldn't tell any difference between them.

Cucumbers are great to grow in this climate until the cucumber beetles show up. And it's not so much the beetle, but the cucumber wilt they transmit to the plant that kills it. With the horrible time I had this year with cucumber wilt we'll see how successful it is in the future. I have never had much in the way of pest problems (guess I was just lucky until now) so it took me the 3rd replanting to figure out what was killing them. At first I thought it was the soil, a neighbor had provided composted cow manure for my garden that my tomatoes and peppers did not like at all this year.....had to dig out the soil and replant those as a result. I suspect it contained herbicides and will not be using it again. But not everything was sensitive to it and the cukes always did fine at first and then after getting established they would just start wilting overnight it seemed. I managed to protect the last 3 plants for a while once I identified the culprit but one only grew about 6 feet and didn't really produce, it was pathetic. Very disappointing to go from amazing to crap in one year. I know what to look for now and those woods behind that arbor have actually been logged out this year and the brush around it cleared so hopefully those beetles won't be able to overwinter in the nearby foliage.

Danielle