No flowers on cucumbers

[Decado]

My cucumbers have almost no flowers on them, just 2 amongst the 8 plants. They also wilt every day in the sunlight despite regular watering. The cucumbers are all deformed (curled and thin on the ends.) Does this sound like bacterial wilt?

[Lindsaylew82]

You may need to feed them. They are heavy feeders, and appreciate blood meal, bone meal, and rich mulch, like grass clippings and compost.

Depending on how old your vines are, they could be going through another growth phase, where they are concentrating efforts into producing more vines.

Crooking can be caused by lots if things. Improper nutrition (lack of nutrients), improper pollination (sometimes die to weather issues like rain), if something gets in it's way while growing. Ground growing causes more crooking than trellis trained plants. Inconsistent watering or lack of mulch.

In my garden the biggest cause of crooking is STINK BUGS and leaf footed bugs. Sucking insects.

[Decado]

Well I've been feeding them with compost tea and fish/seaweed fertilizer regularly, I have them trellised, I have newspaper+grass mulch, and I don't think they need pollinators since they are diva and burpless cucumbers. Guess it could be bugs but I haven't seen any around (I've been looking.) As for watering I've been doing that every 3 days for 3 hours so they should be good on water I'd think.

[applestar]

Describe "regular watering" in more detail please.

[Lindsaylew82]

A picture of your vines would also help, in case you have some type of disease.

Lots of rain or very humid/ very hot weather can effect pollination, even on self pollinating cultivars.

[Decado]

@applestar Every 3 days for 3 hours.

[rainbowgardener]

3 hours sounds like a whole lot. Is that a drip irrigation system or ??

[DDMcKenna]

I'm really interested to hear how those cucumbers turn out?

[Decado]

1.5 hours only got the top 2 inches or so, so I do 3 now. It's an oscillating sprinkler.

[Lindsaylew82]

Top watering (or lots of rain) can affect fruit set via poor pollination.

[Decado]

Why top watering? Also we've had minimal rain.

[Lindsaylew82]

Wet pollen can't pollinate. Are your vines growing right now? Did they have a large flush of cucumbers, and are now just being slow?

The wilting could just be normal for your heat, or they could just need more watering. I really don't like to see them droop like that, though. So I use drop irrigation everyday.

My cukes and squash require watering at least once a day until they get extensive root systems established.. They do not like overhead watering. It encourages fungal diseases. Until recently, that's the only way I could get squash bugs to show their nasty faces.

[Decado]

They did have a large flush and are now doing nothing. I've tried soaker hoses and my water pressure isn't nearly enough for the size of my garden.

[Decado]

And actually pollination shouldn't matter since these varieties don't need it.

[Lindsaylew82]

I had to google your cultivars, because I wasn't familiar with them. I think your plants are recovering from a large flush.

As I was reading, I found something interesting concerning your cuke SHAPE issue. While they don't require pollination to fruit, they CAN be pollinated. Pollination can cause crooking in cultivars that don't require pollination.

Plants that produce long, seedless cucumbers originated in European greenhouses and are termed parthenocarpic, which means they yield cucumbers without pollination. These cucumber plants must be grown in greenhouses to exclude bees because pollination causes their cucumbers to become misshapen and bitter.

[Decado]

Well that's really weird. I wonder if that's what's happening. Thanks for that info. I may have to try some other varieties in the future.

[Decado]

Hmm, well I just watered for 3.75 hours and I put a pan out this time to see how much I was getting and it turns out it was only 3/8". Considering our average daily temperature is about 75 that means I need about 1.75" of water so I should be watering for 5 hours 3 times a week I guess.... That seems like an awful lot.

[rainbowgardener]

It does seem like an awful lot of hours. You would do a lot better with some method that just put water in the soil. You are watering the air (a lot of which just evaporates), the plant leaves, probably some of the soil outside the bed that you don't care about. Seems like you really need some kind of drip irrigation system, soaker hose etc. There are posts around here about irrigation systems. For large area, you can just lay sections of irrigation hoses, connected to a connector pipe (I don't know all the right terms). Then you just move your main hose with the water from one connector pipe to the next.

You are in MN, are you not getting much rain this summer? I have watered very little, because we have been getting plenty of rain. If it is raining frequently, it doesn't matter about how much water you put out.

[Lindsaylew82]

My garden is pretty large, and I had to experiment a little with soaker hoses to get the right ones for my pressure. Here are some things is found in my experience...

I can only water through 2 hoses at a time with my water pressure. Any more than that and the last hose doesn't water adequately.

Gravity matters. Lower hoses water better

Flat soaker hoses water better than the round foamy ones.

I have my hoses set up on a timer that controls 4 hoses. It was cheap on amazon. I have to water each hose separately. Otherwise, I get loss of pressure when the flow is split. Each section gets an hour on a rotating day schedule. So each section gets watered for 1 hour, every other day.

[mattie g]

I just use my regular old hose to water my five cucumber plants. Turn it on, walk over to the plants, and spray each one at the base of the plant for about 30-60 seconds to get a nice, deep soak. I do this every 4-5 days if there hasn't been any rain, and I adjust as necessary depending on recent temps and rainfall. Simple as could be, and it works just fine.

Being able to water plants individually is one of the benefits of a small garden, I guess.

[imafan26]

I grow parthenocarpic cucumbers as well and they will fruit without pollination, however if they do get pollinated, then the fruits will be larger on the bottom end then on the top and the seeds will be larger. I don't find them bitter, but I have a non bitter variety.

Are your cukes in the sun or the shade? it is the only reason I can think of as to why they would not be flowering if they are at least 6 weeks old. They should flower in the sun, but make more leaves in the shade. Fertilizer should have been balanced with relatively low nitrogen.

Actually, I am now a convert to low number fertilizers. I try to keep most of my fertilizers with nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium numbers under 10, my favorites now are citrus fertilizer 6-4-6 or Island Supreme 8-8-8 Anthurium and Orchid fertilizers. The citrus fertilizer contains micros and the other contains slow release nitrogen, humus, and beneficial bacteria stimulant. Island Supreme is distributed by a local company so may not be available elsewhere. I will add small amounts to the garden for specific plants, but mostly I use them for my potted plants.

I do use sulfate of ammonia 21-0-0, in all of my in ground gardens, based on soil tests, it is all I need besides regular additions of compost and organic matter. The phosphorus and potassium levels will be high for years and two of the three plots are alkaline. I only add compost and slow release nitrogen like composted steer manure or blood meal as a pre-plant fertilizer. Sulfate of ammonia will be added as a side dressing 2-3 weeks later.

[grrlgeek]

Well I've been feeding them with compost tea and fish/seaweed fertilizer regularly, I have them trellised, I have newspaper+grass mulch, and I don't think they need pollinators since they are diva and burpless cucumbers. Guess it could be bugs but I haven't seen any around (I've been looking.) As for watering I've been doing that every 3 days for 3 hours so they should be good on water I'd think.

I'm growing Diva this year and they've been working out well. I do have another C. sativus nearby (Boothby Blonde), and just today I bit into the first bitter Diva. I'm guessing it got cross-pollinated. I've had a couple of curled ones too, but I picked them small, and they tasted great.

I had a couple of thoughts about your problems with them, and the wilting you mentioned may or may not be a factor. Check the main stem near the soil level for any signs of damage from borers. Diva is supposed to be less attractive to borer pests, but any port in a storm, so they say. Three hours of water with an overhead sprinkler sounds like a lot of water. Maybe it's not, but it sure sounds like it. Does it recover from the wilting? Knowing how many inches are being applied based on contents of a pan is helpful, but have you checked the actual soil up close and personal? How dry/wet is the actual soil? If the soil is waterlogged the roots wont get enough oxygen. But if it dries out between watering, the plant may be panicking for lack of water. Cukes want water, but a steady supply. Your climate is so much different than mine though. I can't go even 2 days without watering here. I would suggest instead of just measuring water applied, that you take it to the ground level, and see what is really going on.

On the no flower /fruit issue - You said you had a lot of flowers and now none. If the plant is stressed for nutrients, oxygen, light, what have you, it will abort the fruit. A particularly heavy fruit set can also trigger drop. https://www.uaf.edu/files/ces/publicatio ... -00434.pdf . That article recommends limiting fruit set to one per leaf axil, but this article https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/cv268 notes that the beit-alpha types (Diva is considered a mini-cuke of this type) can support more than one fruit per axil and should not be limited except in the case of distorted fruits.

So, what I might surmise, is that your plants aren't getting enough nutrients to support the fruit it's attempting to set (or are somehow unable to uptake the nutrients provided). I also noted a huge flush of flowering in my plants followed by nowhere near that many fruit. That was a while back though, and after the plants got established and started taking over the roof of the growhouse, they started producing more steadily. I feed compost tea, fish, and kelp too, but I also add micronized guano (0-8-0) at half strength once a month. Right now, they're flushing for the second time. My last frost date was April 9, and the plants have been in since the first of May.

How much is enough production? How much is normal? I don't know. I have 4 Diva plants and hubby asked today if we could just give away some cukes because he's a little burned out on them. We're getting about a dozen+ a week, not counting the Armenian and Boothby Blonde. (But I made bread and butter pickles from the Boothbys.)

2014-08-03_09-33-39_651cuke.jpg (38.76 KiB) Viewed 1535 times

2014-08-05_16-02-31_346cuke.jpg (32.68 KiB) Viewed 1535 times

Food for thought. It's a yummy cuke so I hope you get things sorted out. When did you set them out? You may just be entering the productive period so keep the faith if the plant is otherwise healthy and growing. Keep us posted on your progress!

[Decado]

Well interestingly enough I looked at my rain gauge today (I thought a pan would be better since a sprinkler isn't so concentrated and it says .75". I wonder if using a larger thing to measure the water an inch doesn't equal an inch of rainfall? I know with my gauge it's fairly small and an inch on that is more like 2. Anyways I did have a big flush before this problem so that could be part of it. I also noticed today that the first 5" or so of the stems look like they've been scraped up and healed over. Could that be borer damage? Oh and I got them in memorial weekend.

[Decado]

I have so many pests, it's so disheartening. Raspberry borers, box elders, wasp infestations, hordes of japanese beetles, squirrels, robins, rampant fungus, and now possibly cucumber borers. It's enough to make a dude just want to give up.

[rainbowgardener]

I do understand.... I'm holding my breath against the arrival in my area of the stalk borer applestar has written about - a squash vine borer type pest only it can attack everything. That may be when I decide to quit growing veggies!

But it is hard for me to understand squirrels and robins being on the pest list. And it is funny how localized these outbreaks can be. I have had Japanese beetles other years, but have not seen a single one this year. I was thinking maybe it was the harsh winter we had. But MN was one of the few places in the US that was colder than Cincinnati this past winter, so I guess that isn't it.

[Decado]

The squirrels chew on everything and dig holes everywhere and the robins rip up my mulch, every day.