What happened to my cucumbers?

[nhoskins]

I have two nice raised bed gardens. In one, I have 9 cucumber plants which have been growing very well. I check them every day. Today I walked out and nearly fainted when I seen one of my plants was suddenly dead!

It went from perfectly healthy, to suddenly dead and wilted over night. So I look around and check the other plants, and the one next to it looks weird. The base of the vine is split. I took a close up picture of it. The others do not have any problems yet. The garden gets about 1" of rain/water a week and I suspect a vine borer for no other reason than I feel like I've eliminated all other possibilities.

What do you all think? Here is a picture of the dearly departed plant, and the stem of the nearby plant.

Nathan

[rainbowgardener]

Looks like the work of the dreaded squash vine borer. They usually pick on squashes, but cukes are in the same family and they will attack them as well:

http://www.vegedge.umn.edu/vegpest/CUCS/vinebor.htm

We have a thread about them going on here:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=57906

Nothing you can do for the ones that have already been attacked, but look at the links to see ideas about trying to protect the untouched ones.