by In July, most gardeners suffer from a bountiful harvest of cucumbers. But in August, for many, the seemingly endless harvest suddenly comes to naught. However, the reason for the decrease in fruiting and the death of the bushes is not at all in the characteristics of the plant – cucumbers can bear fruit until the frosts.
In most cases, cucumber bushes begin to turn yellow and die due to the fault of the summer residents themselves. We will tell you about the most common mistakes due to which cucumbers suddenly disappear at the end of summer.
Incorrect harvesting
It may seem strange, but the death of cucumbers and the abrupt end of fruiting at the end of summer is often caused by untimely harvesting of the ripened crop. This is explained quite simply. Nature has laid one mission in cucumbers, as in other plants – reproduction. If you do not pick the cucumbers in time, the seeds begin to ripen in them. After this, the plant considers that its mission is fulfilled and stops setting new fruits.
If you pick all the cucumbers immediately after they ripen, without allowing the seeds to form, the cucumber vine continues to produce more and more flowers, trying to fulfill the program for reproduction embedded in it. In this case, fruiting does not end, but continues for several more months.
Cold nights
Another reason that leads to a decrease in cucumber fruiting at the end of summer is cold nights. As is known, cucumber is a heat-loving crop: for normal development, the night temperature should be within 16-18°C. If the thermometer at night begins to drop below 12-14°C, cucumbers need to be covered.
To create a shelter, install arches on the bed in advance. At night, cover the cucumbers with polyethylene film or spunbond. When day comes, remove the film so that the cucumbers do not suffer from overheating (at temperatures above 30°C, the plants stop growing and stop setting fruit), but spunbond can be left if it is used to cover parthenocarpic hybrids. Covering must always be removed from bee-pollinated varieties. If you do not have arches, you can throw the covering material directly onto the vines at night.
In addition to covering the bushes, mulching the soil is also used to protect cucumbers from the August cold. At the end of summer, the root zone is covered with peat, humus, sawdust or straw. A layer of mulch will protect the roots, which are located near the surface of the soil, from hypothermia and thus prolong the life of the bushes.
Lack of fertilizers
One of the most important reasons that leads to cucumbers ceasing to bear fruit is a lack of nutrition. Cucumbers love to “eat well”. And this is not surprising: to grow long, up to 3-4 m, lashes and form a large number of fruits on them, a lot of effort is required. The fertilizers that were put into the soil before and during planting are not enough for this. Therefore, regular fertilizing of the borage during the growing season is a prerequisite for rich and long-term fruiting.
Plants have different nutritional needs at different stages of development: not only the composition, but also the method of applying fertilizers differ. In August, as mentioned above, the nights become cold. This leads to the roots in cold soil beginning to absorb nutrients worse. For this reason, at the end of summer, it is better to use foliar spraying rather than root feeding.
As for the composition of fertilizers for cucumbers, from the second half of summer the amount of nitrogen in them becomes minimal, and its place should be taken by phosphorus and potassium, which are responsible for the setting and formation of fruits and strengthening the immune system.
For foliar feeding of cucumbers in August, you can use ready-made mineral complexes with microelements, for example, Aquarin universal or Zdraven aqua for cucumbers. Or you can prepare a nutrient solution yourself from superphosphate (1 tbsp.) and potassium sulfate (1 tbsp.), diluted in 10 liters of water. In addition, folk remedies are used to spray the bushes, for example, ash infusion, sour milk or whey (the dairy product is diluted with water in a ratio of 1:3).
The best time to carry out foliar feeding of cucumbers is early morning. In this case, the drops of the solution will have time to dry before the bright sun rays appear. It is not recommended to spray in the evening, because wet leaves can cause the proliferation of pathogenic microorganisms and lead to the occurrence of diseases.
Fungal diseases of cucumbers
Cucumber plantings are also susceptible to various fungal diseases: powdery mildew, downy mildew, root rot, etc. The ideal conditions for their development are damp and cool weather, which is what August is like in many regions. Diseases often cause leaves to dry out and fall off, which ultimately leads to the death of the entire bush.
Preventive measures will help prevent the occurrence of fungal diseases.
The first rule is to observe crop rotation. Many pathogenic microorganisms and fungi – pathogens of plant diseases – live in the soil. For this reason, one of the most important measures is to carry out such a simple agricultural technique as observing crop rotation: cucumbers can be returned to the same bed no earlier than after 3 years. They should not be planted after other crops of the Pumpkin family. But the ideal predecessors for cucumbers are:
- cabbage,
- legumes,
- bow,
- garlic,
- corn.
The second rule is to treat plantings with fungicides. But since chemicals can no longer be used at the end of summer, biological preparations are used. It is important to remember that they are not used once, but every 10 days – only in this case will they be useful. Foliar treatments are alternated with application to the soil to increase the amount of beneficial microflora in the soil and reduce the number of pathogenic microorganisms.
For treatments, you can use biological products that contain hay bacillus (for example, Baktofit, Sporobacterin, Fitosporin-M, etc.), or you can use products with trichoderma: Trichoderma Veride 471, Gliocladin, etc.
Cucumber pests
Pests can also cause a loss of cucumber harvest at the end of summer. These are mainly snails, slugs and mice, which destroy already grown cucumbers.
For gastropods, damp weather is an ideal environment, so after rain their numbers increase several times. And if there is no cabbage in your garden, then the mollusks’ target becomes juicy cucumbers. Snails and slugs spoil the skin of the fruit, making it unfit for consumption.
The easiest way to deal with slugs is to sprinkle the beds with something prickly: sand, sawdust, pine needles, crushed eggshells, etc. It is very painful for them to move along such materials, so the pests will crawl around your cucumber beds.
As for mice, during this period field mice already start to rule the garden. Unlike slugs, they not only spoil the skin, but gnaw out the cucumber completely. You can get rid of rodents using special means, as well as folk methods:
- place plants on and around the bed whose smells repel mice: tansy, chamomile, wormwood, etc.;
- Succession, black root or burdock with their thorns are the main enemies of mice. Plant or place these plants near cucumbers – and mice will refuse your cucumbers.
If you manage to avoid the dangers described above, you will be able to harvest cucumbers until the very cold weather.
