[Market-farming] Cucumbers

Pat Meadows pat at meadows.pair.com
Wed Dec 24 10:19:37 EST 2008


On Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:31:15 -0500, you wrote:

>For those growing cukes vertically, are you able to cover the plants with fabric to keep the cucumber beetles away until the plants start to flower?
>

We live in a relatively cool-summer area, in the Appalachian Mountains, in
Pennsylvania's Northern Tier.  

It seems that a whole lot of insects don't get up into these mountains -
there are no Mexican bean beetles here, for example (knock on wood!  I've
grown beans for 8 years here, and I've not seen one single Mexican bean
beetle - although we do have Japanese beetles, but they don't really seem
to like beans, they just nibble a bit now and then.)  

We had no 17-year cicadas here either when most of Pennsylvania had them.
And I have never, ever seen a tick here (this has been confirmed by local
friends who have lived here much longer than I have).

Anyway, the point of all this is that I haven't had any cucumber beetles.
In fact, I don't even know what they look like.

Before everyone starts to envy our relatively insect-free status - we have
a serious gardening enemy here:  cold.  Short frost-free season, cool
nights all summer - down into the 40s routinely in July and August,
sometimes even into the 30s, and there have been very occasional frosts in
July.  (I have a terrible struggle with blight on tomatoes.)  So you pays
your money and you takes your choice..... 

Cheers,
Pat
-- 
In Pennsylvania's Northern Tier, northeastern USA.
Website: www.meadows.pair.com/articleindex.html

What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide
what kind of difference you want to make. - Jane Goodall


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