It's just been getting crispier and crispier. Lotta dead leaves have been trimmed off, but the stems just look completely fried.
My hubby gave it osmocote in June, nitrogen once a week and it's watered daily. It had a really good growth spurt in early July then just went downhill from there.
Can anyone offer advice on what went wrong? Is it fixable or how to avoid next year? Is it just root bound?
Area 5b/6a, Colorado
by WhiteRabbitWorld
32 Comments
This is without a doubt the saddest cucumber plant I’ve ever seen
Something defoliated it. Since you’re in the high desert, my money is on lack of water plus harsh sun.
It’s dead honey. That’s a little pot for a whole cucumber plant. It would need to be regularly fertilized and watered deeply to grow and set fruit. It set that single fruit due to stress, to try and procreate, before it died.
It’s dead and you shouldn’t eat fruit from a dead vine.
As for whether it’s root bound, dig it up and look. However, it really looks like it didn’t get water. Did it ever get totally and completely dry? When that happens potting mix becomes a bit hydrophobic and if you don’t re-hydrate it you can water every day and the water will run down the inside of the pot and out the bottom. To re-hydrate you need to put the pot in a bucket and fill the bucket with room temperature water (below the rim of your pot) and let it soak for a couple of hours. Note: that will not save this plant now.
You also might want to get a bigger pot. Cukes have large root systems.
Pickle worms aka cucumber worms
Vine is dead and fruit is deformed from inconsistent watering
Cukes are known to be short lived, hate the cold, prone to disease – and it’s September where the days are shorter, nights are cooler – and there might be morning dew which the diseases like.
For my cukes and zukes, I like to succession plant throughout the growing season & will have decent sized seedlings of each ready to go in to replace the sorry looking ones later in the year. Too late in the season now though.
Besides that it is dead?
It’s dead Jim. Cukes are very short lived. Next summer, look into succession planting.
It’s dead, Jim.
It’s dead, Jim.
If you let any of the fruit mature on the plant, it will indicate to the plant that its job is done and it will die.
This may be a possibility. This plant is dead dead.
If you’re high desert, it has been getting too cold for those cucumbers at night. They don’t like it below 60/65 degrees. And that pot is too small. If you were watering it every day you were leaching out that nitrogen but cucumbers want more phosphorus than nitrogen anyway. So in short, they’re too cold overwatered and under fertilized.
Dead
It deaad.
Cucs live fast and die hard
I saw your comment about it getting down to 40s/50s at night. That alone could have killed it. The real question is whether yall were able to get an okay harvest while the vine is doing okay?
If not, then it could be because – as others have pointed out, the pot is too small, especially in a dry area. Cucs want lots and lots of water Getting really dry and then really wet will lead to it putting out deformed fruits. It will also make the cucs bitter.
Also, consider changing your fertilization regiment next year? Too much nitrogen will cause the plant to grow lots of foliage but drop fruits. For my cucs (in raised beds) I’ve noticed that they grow best in fertile soil (mixed in compost and 10-10-10 fertilizer at the beginning of the season, good worm activity, etc) and then just left alone. Too much fertilizer just throws them off. I would imagine you would need to fertilize just a bit more though if yours is in a pot.
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cucumbers tend to get bacterial
wilt from cucumber beetles when grown outdoors, so generally don’t last long, and get especially mangled on the fall. that’s my experience in the. US South
Colorado? I’d say thrips and mealies. Looks just like mine every year when I finally give up wiping them off and spraying 🥲
It’s the end of the growing season for them.
Besides the plant dying, it did not get sufficient pollination. A cucumber needs to be pollinated 12 times (I believe) to get a full sized fruit.
Mine looks like this too and keeps producing 🤣
Ok here’s the deal. As others have said, cubes are short lived and hate cool nights. However, the most likely causes of your dead trellis are the following two diseases:
https://extension.umn.edu/disease-management/bacterial-wilt
https://extension.umn.edu/disease-management/bacterial-wilt
They’re very prevalent and almost impossible to avoid. They are also not dangerous, regardless of the suggestions not to eat the remaining fruit. That may be true where there’s the risk of poisoning, but not for end of season wilts on tomatoes and cukes. Just cut off the funky end and enjoy.
My guess is that the original issue was that your soil is too dense and didn’t drain quickly enough which created root rot which wilted some of the leaves and then your husband cut those leaves off and in the desert area probably parched it even further.
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Yeah its called not enough water mostly, secondly not enough NPK
I had a similar situation result after my initial May planted cuc plants gave me months of many Cucs until mid-August. I use Succession planting so my newer three cuc plants over yonder that were planted from seedlings in mid July were already flowering AND now have avoided some traditional problems. Some days I think I’m just gonna start my Zone 6 crops in late June. I always get easy growth and great harvests from my second, later batch of veggies. My yellow crookneck squash loves this weather now and is just pumping out fruit! ….I 💙 the miracle of gardening! 🙋🏻♂️
The plant is getting cooked by the sun. You need to get a thermometer and stick it into the pot at noon to see what temps it has.
You can try using a winter burlap cover to shield the pot from the sun.
You can also dig it out and look at what the soil inside looks like.
It’s also possible that it’s either over watered, has had too much fertilizer put in, or doesn’t have proper drainage.
I would enlarge the drainage hole and replace the soil with all new fresh potting soil if the temps are OK.
As others have said, succession plant new cucumbers every 6 weeks or so. They’re not built to survive a long time.
It’s dead Jim.
Cucumbers have very short lifespans. After a few fruits the plants will permanently shrivel and eventually die. Has it been producing for a while or is it younger?
Mine died this year too.