by britta
Who Dunnit?- Mysterious Cucumber Genocide
7:13 pm in Plants, Seeking Advice by britta
The cucumbers were a real mystery. Like Marilyn and James Dean, they have thus far all died a tragic death after a short, but full life.
We had about 10 of these georgeous exciting northern cucumbers. It was a little unrealistic to think we could grow such a big fruit in a windowfarm, but we figured we’d try and just find a way of supporting them when they got big. And they did get big. We had them trelliced around some cross-wires made of string.
They all produced a lot of flowers and after we pollinated them with a paintbrush, we had tons of 1″ long baby cucs. The plants themselves all looked very healthy.
But then all of the sudden the plants would die when the fruits were cornichon-sized. We think maybe we didn’t have our fruiting/flowering nutrient solution mix right (??).
Someone else please try cucumbers, get it right, and let us know how to do it! I’m drooling at the thought of some homegrown apartment cornichons!
Is it possible that the cucumber plant requires more space for the roots than is available. It’s a relatively large plant, and to support it’s considerable weight, requires it to reach deeper into the soil.
Hi Kyle. The roots for our cucumber plants did not appear to be restricted when we pulled them out. Roots almost never get root bound in hydroponics the way they do in dirt in pots. In hydroponics, you are delivering the nutrients directly to the roots so the roots do not have to grow large to go out and find nutrients and water the way they do in soil. Plus, the roots are not competing with soil for space. The how-to’s specify that you put your plants roots in the clay pellets inside a perforated net cup. The roots grow out of the net cup and hang down into the empty space below the net cup inside the bottle. The nutrient rich water trickles over them on its way down through the column.
Normal cucumber plants can get too big for the system design we have here that uses fishing wire as the suspension method. Even if you use extra cross wires to create a trellising system, if you are going to grow large plants, we recommend using tension cable to suspend the system. See the photos of the Eyebeam system. We were able to house some fairly large cherry tomato plants in that system.
Also, we used plant ties to tie some of the bigger vines to stable parts of the system, like the tension cable. That way, you can keep big plants from pulling their own roots out of the net cup.
i have a cucumber is a deep well system right now. We are using bush typesa and self polinating greehouse types. The question i have is how often did you change your soultion and what were the symptoms of the die out. Sounds like a salt build up.
you might try to go to teritorial seed company and look at a variety called rocky.
Can you give a better description of how they died? Were there any visible problems with the leafs or plants? Did you see any pests or other things growing in or around the plants?
Cucumbers are very “rooty” plants. If by chance some root damage or trauma occurred they could die off quickly. Cucumbers require a lot of water; so, maybe the roots could not support the fruiting process. What temperature was the room and the nutrient solution? Was the humidity low enough to allow transpiration from the leafs (because even if the roots pulled enough water, the lack of evaporation from the leafs was not allowing the roots to pull more water).
It’s so hard to tell without knowing “how” they did. It’s like CSI without a crime scene or dead bodies. LOL
Some plants a determinate. They fruit and then die off. Look for indeterminate cucumbers.