Can anyone tell me if I am supposed to stop a cucumber plant at a certain size? I stopped my tomatoes at 4 trusses but my cucumbers have trailed all over the greenhouse and have an enormous amount of leaves. Are these leaves necessary for shade or can I cut a lot of them off and, at what point, do I stop the plant growing? Finally, some people tell me to leave them trail on the ground and others say to stake them up. I did some of each and found that the slugs got many of the ones on the ground.
I grow cucumbers on a trellis made from old swingset poles with chicken wire attached to them. When the vines get so long that they start hanging down off the trellis or falling onto the ground I just cut them off, that doesn't hurt crop production. You should leave the leaves alone, the plant absorbs energy from the sun thru them and provides shade for the cukes.
Emma, This year we tried staking our cucumbers up to see if they would do better. We did similiar to Toni. We put up two post, one on each end and put wire across about 4 tiers high. We thought this went very well for us and we'll be doing it again next year. I'm hopeing these pictures will give an idea of what we've done. these are our beginning tomatoes: these are the same tomatoes a few months later.
hey my picts were posted before I went to bed ya'll. I know those aren't TOMATOES. the pictures are of CUCUMBERS. really I do know the differance.
Limiting the size of cucumbers Thank you very much Toni and Petunia. The information and photographs are very helpful to me. I had been told, incorrectly, that the large leaves were taking up the nutrients that were needed by the cucumbers and that I should remove some. I thought that was rather odd as I didn't really think that they would have such large leaves in the first place if the plant did not need them. Emma.
Just a note blackrose I corrected myself in that next post after the pictures: those wern't tomatoe plants BUT cucumber plants that we vined up.
