Pruning cucumber vines

[jemsister]

I have three cukes growing in an 18 gallon tote. They have become very thick and bushy, so much so that I can't see anything inside the pot unless I spread apart the leaves. I'm concerned that it could encourage mildew to have them grow so bushy--especially in our temperate, humid summers. Should I prune some of the leaves to improve air flow? If so, how is this done--do I just trim off some of the leaves? Thanks!

[imafan26]

Do you have vining or bush cucumbers?

I know you can prune vining cucumbers, but I don't know about pruning bush cucumbers. I usually give my bush cucumbers about 30 inch circumference of space.

[jemsister]

They are vining cucumbers. They are starting to spill out of the box, which is good, but there are so many leaves at the base, and with our humid temps it is just really thick down there. And the humidity gets trapped even more because of the lip of the tote, which is a good three inches. So all that down there is trapped by leaves and plastic. Can I just cut away the leaves at the bottom of the vine to open up that space?

[imafan26]

You can cut some leaves without hurting the plant but I have learned my lesson not to over prune anything and take only a few leaves at a time and then wait a day or two and look at the plant and decide to whether to take a few more. If you take off too many leaves especially in summer and there are fruit in the darkness under the leaves, they get too much sun and sunscald and most plants do not take kindly to having too many leaves being taken off at one time. If you are training the cucumber vines up, you can remove the suckers, that usually is enough to thin them.

[jemsister]

Eek. Well, I did go ahead and prune them. Hope I didn't take too much! I suppose time will tell. They look okay so far!