How to Grow Endless Cucumbers All Summer Long Even in the Heat

Hello friends welcome back to my garden. Today I'm sharing exactly how I grow endless cucumbers all summer long even in the Florida heat. There are three things you need to do to be able to successfully grow cucumbers during the summer in a hot humid tropical or subtropical climate. It can be done but you need to follow these three very important tips that I'm going to tell you right now to be successful and that is cultivar selection, reducing diseases, and getting rid of pests. If you get these three things right your summer harvest will be full of cucumbers. I'm start off with the single most important tip for growing cucumbers successfully through the summer even in extremely hot climates like my Florida garden and that's cultivar selection. You can do everything else right but if you don't choose the right type of cucumber it's going to struggle in the heat. Not all cucumbers are created equal. Some handle heat pests and disease much better than others. When it comes to variety selection you have three main options. Asian cultivars, heat tolerant hybrids, and cucumber substitutes. If you prefer heirlooms look for Asian types like China jade, suyo long, or Japanese long. These varieties have naturally higher heat resistance compared to standard American cucumbers like the common pickling or fresh market types you find in the grocery store. If you want something even tougher try hybrids such as calypso or 201 cucumber. These have been bred for extra resistance to heat pests and diseases which makes them a great choice for hot and humid regions. Now if you want to think outside the box there are also non-cucumber crops that look and taste just like cucumbers. For example, Indian snake cucumbers are actually a type of melon but they're originally from India and thrive in very high temperatures. They have a mild flavor, crisp texture, and thin edible skin. You'd never know they weren't cucumbers. You might have also heard of Armenian cucumbers which are technically melons too. They look very similar to the Indian snake cucumbers but in my experience the Indian snake variety performs better in extreme heat. And finally if you're after something you can turn into pickles try cucamelons or Indian burr gherkins. Both are excellent substitutes that can handle the summer heat while still producing a veggie that can be pickled just like regular pickling cucumbers. I do have seeds on my website for all of these varieties plus much more if you need some. I'll link them in the description. As I approach summertime I switch to growing these three types because trust me the other stuff is not going to make it. Okay so now that you have the correct varieties selected let's discuss some gardening tips to make sure they grow and produce in the heat. The very first thing you need to understand is that cucumbers are very susceptible to pests and diseases. I mean obviously growing the more resistant varieties that I just mentioned is going to help but you're still going to get some diseases. I expect them every time I grow things in the cucurbit family which includes cucumbers, squash, and melons. I say this so you don't freak out when you see them. You didn't do something wrong. It is that common. The plants will get them but let's do all that we can to minimize these issues. The very first thing to help prevent diseases is grow your cucumbers vertically. Do not have them growing on the ground where they will pick up a ton of diseases in the soil. Plant diseases are caused by pathogens the same kind that make us humans sick. That includes bacteria, viruses, molds, and fungus. The soil is inoculated with them and they jump right up on top of your plants and spread around. They also float around in the air and spread via water when it flows through the soil. Vertical gardening picks the plants up off from the ground making it harder for the pathogens to get on them. Plus it improves air flow so the leaves dry faster. Pathogens, especially things like powdery mildew which is a fungus, like to spread on the wet surfaces of the leaves. Also don't overhead water your plants. Keep the leaves as dry as possible by watering at the base of the plants or use a drip irrigation system. I make a simple trellis using an electrical conduit pipe and teapots which is great for growing cucumbers. I'll link in the description to my tutorial showing how I build them. And this is my wall of cucumbers here. It's all growing vertically. Everything looks great. I do have a couple vines that like reach the ground and are kind of rambling here and they look significantly more diseased than any of the leaves and things going on up here on the trellis. The second thing that you can do is prune out old, diseased, dead, dying leaves because this is going to help slow down the spread of the diseases. These leaves are not doing any favors for the overall plant. Instead they're just taking energy that can be to output new healthy growth. Don't feel bad for removing them. You're cleaning up the plants and minimizing the spread of diseases. And my last trick to outmaneuver the diseases is to fertilize weekly so your cucumber plants are constantly outputting new healthy green growth to outpace all the ones catching diseases. I like to sprinkle about a fourth of a cup of an organic granular fertilizer like Espoma Garden Tone every seven to ten days to keep nutrients consistent. I also really like Agrothrive if you're looking for a liquid fertilizer. Whatever fertilizer you use, make sure it's an organic one because you can risk burning your plants if you fertilize with a synthetic fertilizer this frequently. Ultimately you're going to get some diseases though or maybe you're having a particularly aggressive disease spread. Then there are a few spray treatments that I recommend. My favorite general treatment is a spray of one cup of three percent hydrogen peroxide per gallon of water. It will clean and disinfect the leaves. I spray about every three days or so until I notice that the disease has stopped spreading. If the situation is very bad and you're not noticing any improvement then I would upgrade to something stronger like Monterey disease control spray which is considered organic. I highly recommend you do not use a copper-based fungicide because copper doesn't break down and then will build up in your soil. Now let's talk about pests because for sure for sure you will get pests when growing cucumbers. The pest pressure is at its highest during the summer. It is very important that you check your plants every single day and as soon as you see a pest issue you need to treat for it. Don't wait a few days and then come back. Every day that goes by the pests are multiplying which means they will be harder to get rid of and you will have to spray even more treatments. The most common pests you will get are chewing insects, actually caterpillars that eat the leaves and fruit. You can pick them off your plants and squish them but chances are you're not going to see them unless you come out during the night because many of them are nocturnal. But if you see chewed up leaves or little black or orange balls that's actually their frass, they are there for sure. Have sprays like BT which stands for Bacillus thuringiensis in stock at home so you can treat immediately. The other common pests are squash bugs. This one is difficult to control because they have a hard shell so spray treatments are not that effective on them. I have a video with 12 organic ways to get rid of them or control squash bugs which I'll link below in the description but if I had to choose just one method from all of the 12 I mentioned it would be manually removing the adults. This means they can't continue to breed more babies and subsequent generations. One female squash bug lays hundreds of eggs and they hatch in about 10 days so that can equate to a massive amount of generations in one summer. The easiest way to do this is to water your cucumber plants at the base which will make all of the adults and babies just scurry up the plants. They don't like water. This makes it very easy to find them then grab them by hand or use a mini handheld vacuum to vacuum them up and drop them all into a bucket of soapy water so they drown. If you do this for a little more than 10 days in a row you will disrupt them from reproducing in your garden and the whole problem just goes away. And that's it! Follow these simple steps and you'll be harvesting fresh cucumbers every week all summer long. If you found this video helpful don't forget to give me a big thumbs up that helps out my channel more than you know and consider subscribing so you don't miss any of my gardening tutorials. Thank you for watching and happy gardening!