If you are ready to pull you hair out because your cucumbers are dying, being eaten by pests, or just aren’t growing right, you might want to calm down and read this article.

You need to watch your cucumbers when you grow them. They can suffer from various ailments that you can prevent and cure.

• First up is the cucumber beetle. These little pests, in addition to eating the leaves, can carry the bacteria responsible for bacterial wilt. The best way to stop them is to control them. Insecticides, covers for the cucumbers, and wilt resistance cucumber plants are all great solutions.
• Next up is the cucumber mosaic virus and the tobacco mosaic virus. These viruses can cause the leaves of the cucumbers plants to become deformed and turn yellow. The fruits can also become discolored and misshapen.

The cucumber mosaic virus can be spread by aphids (tiny insects) and other infected plants. If you find an infected plant, pull it up and destroy it immediately, before other plants catch it.

The tobacco mosaic virus is spread by smoking near the plants or by touching the plants after smoking. It can be prevented by washing your hands. Both of these viruses are incurable. Again, the only thing you can do is to pull up he plants and destroy them.

• Another cucumber sickness is misshapen or deformed fruit. Don’t worry its not a virus or an inscect this time, it usually means too much fertilizer or too little water.

If you have hollow cucumbers then you need to fertilize the cucumbers more. Another good thing to do would be to keep the soil moist around the plants. The hollow cucumbers are still safe to eat, but they may be a little bitter.

If your cucumbers are bent, like in a c-shape, you might want to water them. This is usually caused by hot dry conditions. It happens more in the late summer, though. It is also helpful to mulch the ground and add compost to it.

• The final cucumber calamity for today is powdery mildew. Powdery mildew is a fungus that spreads across the leaves of a plant a drains them of nutrients, sometimes killing the plant. It causes the leaves to turn brown and yellow and can kill the fruit.

The best treatment is to pick off the dying leaves and fruit and discarding them. Do not use these discarded leaves for compost, as they will infect other plants. Increase air circulation around the plant and keep it well watered and fertilized.

These tips and helpful hints will help you on your way to a cornucopia of fresh, delicious cucumbers!

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