When soil is warm, add a layer of straw mulch to keep fruit clean and help keep slugs and beetles away. Make the most of your food growing efforts by regularly feeding plants with a water-soluble plant food. Be sure they receive an inch of water every week. How do you keep cucumber plants healthy?Ĭucumbers will grow quickly with little care. Pruning the vines to remove lateral, or side shoots, redirects this plant energy into the cucumbers themselves, often producing greater yields and healthier fruit. Once cucumber vines have begun to set fruit, the growth rate increases both in the vines and the fruit. To solve this problem, use a well-balanced fertilizer. A possible sign that your cucumber plant has a potassium deficiency is that the leaves begin to turn yellow at the edges and tips. Why are my cucumber leaves turning yellow around the edges?Ĭucumbers tend to need a higher amount of potassium when it begins to flower. The flowers are easy to tell apart – the female flower has a swelling beneath it that will become a cucumber. Do I need to remove male cucumber flowers?īoth should be left on outdoor varieties, but pinch off the male flowers when they appear on indoor varieties to prevent the fruit from becoming bitter. Growing conditions (such as temperature, weather, and nitrogen levels) also affect pollination and flower production. A lack of fruit will also occur due to poor pollination. Why do my cucumber plants have lots of flowers but no fruit?Ī cucumber plant will flower but produce no fruit if there is a lack of either male or female flowers on the plant. You can remove flowers on the bottom so the plant will focus more on the top cucumbers (this will keep cucumbers off the ground too). Should I pinch off early cucumber flowers?Ī: Pinch off the flowers if you want more stem and leaf growth – especially if the plant is young.

Pinch out the tips of flowerless sideshoots after seven leaves. The developing sideshoots can be left to trail over the ground or trained up stout netting. When plants have developed seven leaves, pinch out the growing tip. Do you pinch the tops out of cucumber plants? Trim off all shoots that branch from the main vine stem.

Remove older leaves to allow light to reach developing fruit and improve air circulation. Should I cut the bottom leaves off my cucumber plant? How do you increase the yield of a cucumber?

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