Use Floating Row Covers to Grow Better Cucumbers By
Terry Cunning
Written for an American audience, I assume the author
is referring to horticultural fleece when he mentions
floating row covers.
As well as disease and pest protection, horticultural
fleece also creates a beneficial micro-climate, keeping
the night-time temperature that little bit higher than
otherwise.
Cucumbers are easy to grow in a home garden except for
one problem. They are especially susceptible to one
disease.
Perhaps
you've seen it in your own garden. You have
planted a row of seeds and they have sprouted
nicely and have grown into long vines that
have spread out over the garden and turned
themselves into a big cucumber patch.
You
are beginning to anticipate having a bountiful
harvest of cucumbers for salads and maybe
even pickles. But then one evening when you
are walking through the garden you notice that
one cucumber plant has wilted.
Your first
thought is that maybe one of the kids, or maybe
even the dog, might have been running through
the garden and maybe they broke the plant off
at the base of the stem. So you get down on
your knees and check things out. Nope. The
stem is intact.
Then you think that maybe the
plant needs water, but if that is so then why
aren't all the other cucumber plants
surrounding it wilted too? Then you notice a
few little striped or spotted bugs flying around,
especially near the blossoms of the plant, and
then you realize what has happened.
All those
little bugs are cucumber beetles. They have
infected your cucumber plants with a disease
called cucumber wilt.
What can you do to control it?
Cucumber wilt is a bacterial disease that is
carried by the cucumber beetle. If you find an
infected plant in your garden the best thing to
do is just to pull it out of the ground and burn
it.
At this stage, after one plant has wilted, the
cucumber beetles have no doubt had a chance
to spread through all the other plants in your
garden. If you have a really healthy garden you
might still be safe because many of your plants
could be strong enough to resist the disease
and still produce a crop.
If this seems to be the
case, then the easiest thing to do is just to do
nothing. But if your garden is the least bit
stressed or out of balance and you can see
cucumber beetles zooming around everywhere
then the wilt will probably spread and kill
almost all the cucumber plants.
The next thing
you can do is to try to kill as many of the
cucumber beetles as possible. Insecticides
containing rotenone or pyrethrins are probably
the easiest and safest solution and they do
work, but it will still be a continuing battle to
save the rest of your plants long enough to get
a harvest.
Planning ahead and use floating row covers.
There is a simple way to raise cucumbers
without having to worry about cucumber
beetles and cucumber wilt. Just put a barrier over your
plants
so that the
beetles will never have a chance to touch them.
The easiest way to do this is to use floating
row covers. Floating row covers are big sheets
of spun-bonded polypropylene fabric that are
light enough and thin enough to lay over the
plants. Enough light and rain can pass
through the fabric so the cucumber plants can
grow until they are ready to blossom without
ever being molested by a cucumber beetle or
by being sprayed with and insecticide.
When
the blossoms appear, just remove the cover so
that pollination can take place. If there are any
cucumber beetles around when you remove the
cover it will probably take them some time to
find the plants and then some more time to do
any real damage. By then you will be picking
cucumbers.
Tips for using floating row covers.
You should put the row covers on the same
day you plant your cucumber seeds. Don't let
the seeds sprout uncovered because the beetles
might find the tiny seedlings then and all will
be lost. You should also place the covers so
that they have room to puff up after the plants
start to grow under them.
Don't put them on
tight. Make sure to seal the edges completely
with dirt all the way around. This is the only
way. Don't use rocks or garden staples
because these things still leave openings where
a bug can crawl through.
Copyright 2006, Terry Cunning.
About the author:
Terry Cunning is an organic gardener from Pennsylvania. Please
visit his website at http://www.gardening.organiccavalcade.com/
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