3 Common Cucumber Trellising MISCONCEPTIONS!

so when it comes to trellising we all know that it's important when it comes to cucumbers it's especially important keeps them off the ground helps them stay more disease free increases airflow and allows fruit to ripen and be a little more uniform but there's probably some misconceptions you've heard that are actually not true that you think are true about trellising cucumbers and that's what we're going to talk about in today's episode let's go so the first misconception and I think one of the largest misconceptions about trellising cucumbers is that because you're going vertically you can space them closer together now when it comes to planting cucumbers closely there is always kind of a gray area because you'll hear people say why space my cucumber plants about 10 inches apart others will say I space mine like two feet apart there's always going to be a kind of a Goldilocks scenario there where sure you might be able to space them 10 inches apart but what varieties what trellising style right there's a lot of unknowns there and then with like two feet okay yeah like I think that's very very conservative on your spacing I think that is really far apart you're probably not going to have any issues you probably could move them closer together but if you want to space them up up two feet apart that's fine too but I think when it comes to trellising we automatically assume because they're growing up well that means we can just crowd the heck out of them and plant them you know three to four inches apart in the circumstance here we have a cattle panel trellis our beds are three feet apart and I'm still only going to plant about three plants in this well three groupings of plants in this area and I'm gonna thin to one plant so I'm basically going to get a plant about every foot that's as close as I really want to plant my cucumbers yet I see people all the time talking about how well you're trellising them so you can space them if you were going to space them six inches space them apart like you know or if you're going to space them 12 inches apart normally space them six inches apart on a trellis because you're on a trellis and that's why you can do it which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me because there's really no rationale other than you're growing them vertically they're still going to be if you're growing them along the ground imagine how big that plant gets they're still going to be that large just on a trellis so if you have the spacing or even more than that they're going to be way too crowded you're going to have a lot of restricted airflow you're going to have things like disease you're going to have things like powdery mildew you're going to really struggle with uh you know adequately feeding and nourishing that many plants you're going to run into problems so I'm going to get these planted out here we're going to do three groupings of plants every 12 inches apart when they grow up we are going to thin them to just two plants or just sorry one plant so we have three plants total here so um so two seeds per hole that way we don't have to worry about nothing germinating once something does germinate you could put even three or four seeds per hole I just know that my viability is going to be really good once we have germination I'm going to thin to the healthiest plant we're gonna have three plants growing up and that's as many as I want here all right the second most common misconception with trellising cucumbers is that they will simply trellis themselves if you put them on a cattle panel trellis like this or really any trellis at all what you will find is that they will try to climb but then as hard as they might try they will fail every single time they may trellis a slight distance maybe 11 or 12 inches or so once you get past maybe a foot and a half at most the weight of the plant is going to cause it to fall it will end up back on the ground and that's because cucumbers yes are a Vine but they are not a very strong Vine like say a pea is Right a pea or a pole bean has really strong tendrils that occur really closely together and those act as anchors to Anchor themselves to whatever they are climbing cucumbers on the other hand have really kind of almost been that's been kind of phased out they did at one point have tendrils that were probably strong enough to climb because that's how they would grow naturally but because we've grown them on the ground for so long and we've really domesticated them to be a non-climbing plant over time that ability to really climb I feel has been kind of lost it's been kind of just bred out those traits just really are not prioritized and you do see that very frequently with even side note things like garlic garlic used to give actual garlic seeds however because we've only grown the bulbs and the garlic bulbs are kind of the thing that we prioritize we replant to have consistent production over time the garlic has actually bred sterile there's no seeds that actually occur from the garlic quick fun fact for you guys so the very same thing happens with cucumbers and so it's a common misconception that you can just plant your cucumbers and that they will just continue to grow up a beautiful trellis I've had lots of people write in that say I can't get my cucumbers to make like that beautiful cucumber tunnel that you see online and all those beautiful Pinterest photos or Instagram photos and that's because there was a lot of training involved and that's what you need to do it's not that they can't make that happen because those things are very real in fact we had that about a year or two ago with our cantaloupe we had beautiful cantaloupes all the way up to here cantaloupes are very much the same thing as cucumbers they're both melons in fact another fun fact for you guys um but but they do not climb naturally like that what you'll find is that the tip will grow and as soon as it leaves that trellis it does not find a surface and stick to it it won't stick to the edge of the surface and say all right this is what I'm going to climb up what will happen is it will stick its little growth tip through and they'll say well all right I'm just going to keep growing and then what happens it gets long and then it falls down and that's what a lot of gardeners get frustrated with is they say I cannot get my cucumbers to climb and I simply say are you training them and that's all it takes to get your cucumbers to grow up a trellis successfully is by training them how do you do that I'll show you how okay so what we're going to do is we're going to use this hose as an example because I think this hose actually serves as a wonderful example for what a cucumber plant would do so because we don't have any cucumber plants that are growing up really tall check this out you're going to have a cucumber plant that like look okay the cucumber plant is supporting itself there's no problem here but you go here now you got some problems so what do you do if you have support well the thing is the support right only lasts so far and the head is so heavy that as you go up what you're going to do is you're going to want to do what's called weaving and it's really simple all you're doing is you're basically using this now as support that as the plant grows you go in one side gets a little long starts kind of droop put in the other side right and now gets taller it's going to start growing out this way well if it goes out too far well you're gonna you got floppage that's not good because it's going to snap and get all dangly so you take it weave back the other way right starts to get Too Tall well it doesn't support itself anymore you got problems take it weave it back in and now look at this this is supporting itself along the trellis it's not really using the tendrils as much as it is using the stem in between now you can do this with things like Clips you can clip it to a string that works out great in things like greenhouses you can weave it in between the cattle panel like I did here there's lots of ways for you to Trellis a cucumber and to get it up off the ground but just by assuming it's going to naturally trellis is simply a pipe dream it's never going to happen and I've never seen an instance where it just climbs free will just up you know a five six foot trellis it's not going to happen and so if uh if it's happened for you send me pictures I'd love to see it I've never seen it in my entire life and uh and so this is a wonderful example of kind of how to do that this is using the weaving method but again you can also use it just with Clips we have these little things called c-clips if you're using string it just Clips around the string and then underneath a leaf node to let the weight of the plant support against the clip just as it would along these metal rungs here so that's a second misconception and I honestly think it's maybe tied for first for the most common misconception but um definitely a popular one nonetheless all right in the third and final misconception around trellising your cucumbers is that if you trellis them they'll be less prone to things like cucumber beetles now I simply have to say that that is outright Falls I've seen it spread around the internet like wildfire lately and they simply say well if you trellis your cucumbers up they'll be off the ground away from the soil and they're going to be less prone to getting things like cucumber beetles that's just simply not true under any circumstances in fact it's kind of the opposite which is the only downside with trellising your cucumbers now don't get me wrong there's a lot of benefits and I would highly encourage you to still trellis your cucumbers however the one downside is that you actually have a higher chance of getting cucumber beetles and here's why so the reason why is because of airflow now the reason why we trellis is for airflow but the reason why cucumber beetles are attracted to the Cucumbers is because of airflow and the reason why is because when we have airflow it helps to dry out the plants it keeps them less prone to things like powdery mildew it actually will lead to a healthier plant overall all and it will also like I said in the beginning give you more uniform fruits it'll help the fruits to ripen it'll actually attract pollinators because they're going to be able to see the blossoms better and those big yellow blossoms are kind of a calling card for things like butterflies and bees and whatnot and so it's really important to Trellis your cucumbers but when you trellis them they're going to be getting that airflow and what does that airflow do it spreads the pheromones now the pheromones are created by a chemical called cucurbating it's actually what makes cucumbers bitter it's found in the skin of cucumbers but also the flowers of cucumbers and when the wind blows through the air it carries with it the scent of the cucurbateosin that basically the basic pheromone it's almost like you wearing cologne if you wear cologne and you just are in a room with no airflow have someone stand 30 feet away from you and see if they can smell you but then do this put the same amount of cologne on and put a fan behind you blowing towards them what they're going to find is that those cologne molecules that that scent is going to follow with the wind it's going to blow the scent further and so you're actually going to get further uh kind of scent radius with your plants when they're on the ground the wind can't really capture as much of those pheromones and because there's less wind closer to the ground there you know they're less uh they're they're more aerodynamic right the wind kind of just goes over the top of them rather than creating a giant windscreen that then the wind hits it and blows the pheromones you're actually way more likely to get cucumber cucumber beetles when you're trellising than when you're not but like I said the benefits of trellising far outweigh the cons so don't not do it but just have those things in your back pocket that if you do see cucumber beetles there's ways to prevent them and we actually have lots of ways on how to prevent them one of which we just did a video on about intercropping and I would highly recommend planting something like dill or something like basil next to your cucumber plants because that scent that those plants give off is what can help you combat the cucumber beetles that scent will help to mask the scent of the Cucumbers the pheromone gets kind of mixed up and muddied up so they can't smell it as easily and therefore they can't find the host as uh as easily if you're interested in watching that video I'll try to remember to post a link in the comments box down or the description box down below because it's a really handy video that talks all about intercropping and that's one thing you can do to kind of offset the negatives of trellis in your cucumbers but that's all I've got for you today I hope you guys enjoyed I hope you learned something new if you did make sure to hit the Thumbs Up Button we have so many more videos coming out and YouTube loves to see your engagement we've noticed a massive increase in viewership not only in your viewership but also people that have never found this channel before and this people are finding this channel more than ever because of Engagement so I want to thank you guys because it doesn't cost you a single penny to throw a like button up there or to hit the like button because that engagement shows you YouTube this is worth promoting and this is Worth showing to other people so thank you so much for helping spread this video around like uh like wildflower seeds and I hope you guys enjoyed I hope you learned something new and as always this is Luke from the my Gardener Channel reminding you to grow bigger take care bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 127,408

Keywords: MIgardener, vegetable gardening, organic gardening

Id: K83pvOF-5Ig

Length: 13min 5sec (785 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 03 2023