Cucumbers and Yellow Squash

[marlin]

What's the story with Cucumbers. It made a number of really choice cucs and then sort of shriveled up. Do they have a short life span? Was feeding it plenty. My yellow squash has what looks like white frost all over the leaves. Any ideas.
Mahalo
Marlin

marlin

[Andrew]

White frost sounds like powder mildew. Someone on this forum mentioned a milk substance was effective at eliminating this if I remember correctly. try a search for powder mildew.

Andrew

[pslamont]

I grew beautiful squash and cukes when I first came... only to find each one stung by a fruit fly and melting to mush before I could harvest....We put up a screened greenhouse.

I want to be the kind of woman that, when my feet
hit the floor each morning, the devil says

"Oh Crap, She's up!"

[Dinamight]

You don't need a greenhouse. We bought a fruit fly lure to put in a home made trap, or you can buy methyleugonol (sp) at Ace, dip it in a cotton ball, and make your own trap. It attracts all fruit flies before they eat your tomatoes, etc. Works like a charm! We ended up with lots of tomatoes, and while they were flourishing we got hundreds of flies in our homemade trap. You can get the lures from the Master Gardeners or get instructions of how to make traps using large plastic drink bottles - or I'm sure you can find it on the web. Master Gardeners are great, they know all about the bugs and diseases and if they don't they'll find out.

The white stuff is powdery mildew and it's apparently not harmful but I do wonder, as it does eat lots of leaves. I bought a product from Garden exchange to stop it, and it works, but I don't know how "eco" it is.

[DickWilson]

A 9 to 1 mix of whole milk to water works great. spray leaves to dripping. Can be repeated weekly if necessary.

dick wilson
"Nothing is idiot proof,because idiots are so ingenious!"

[Jay Bondesen]

If it's just for a few cucumbers I put paper bags on mine when they are small and hard. They grow fine in the bags and it keeps the fruit flys off.

Jay

[Daniel]

White powdery stuff sounds more like white fly infestation to me. as for the cucumber (as well as the squash) there is a worm that will kill the whole plant over night. It does this by burrowing into the stem and eating the center near the roots. There are also worms that eat only the fruits. Good luck!

Daniel R Diamond