What is happening here?

[Burlykatz73]

I haven't had much luck this year with my garden. But my biggest concern is my cucumber plants. The fruit grows and hits a certain point and balloons out and turns orange (picture attached) Does anyone have any idea what is happening? Is this disease or pest? And is there any hope if me saving the plant?

 

[Oliver Buckle]

The white on the leaves looks like mildew, pretty common on cucumber, I have it on mine, but I have not seen it affect the fruit. It is almost as though you have a variety for gherkins so the fruit stays small and then ripens. Partly I am posting so that if you get a better answer I will see it and learn something, sorry I can't be more helpful.

 

[Ginger with Roots]

If you have squash beetles (look like ladybugs with 7 spots), they carry all kinds of fun diseases and viruses. Plus they damage the leaves. The stunted cucumber growth is probably a lack of pollinators. Severe rain, cooler temps and extreme temps will reduce bee activity. Are you seeing plenty of bees working the flowers?

 

[NMRuss]

The stunted cucumber growth is probably a lack of pollinators.

In my experience this is most likely whats happened. Good call Ginger.

 

[Mystic Moon Tree]

So it looks to me like they are hungry and need to be fertalized. You have them in a fairly small planter for a squash with what looks like heavier materials in the soil. Add a potting mix with some aged chicken maneur or a good rich organic liquid fertalizer and make sure you are watering them enough. Next year you need a much bigger pot for cucumbers like a wine barrel, or put them directly in the ground full sun. They like a lot of water & don't do well in the cold at all. If their roots are cramped they will put out tiny flowers. Since the yellowing is around the edges mostly it is likely a nutrient, water or ideal temperature defficiency. If it is the very beginning stages of powdery mildew then you can buy a foliars spray bottle and dilute milk, water & dawn dish soap to spray on the leaves, add a bit of neem oil to repel pests. Spray it on at a cooler time of the day without washing it off so it doesn't burn them. Reapply every 10 days as needed. When it sets fruit ring with crushed egg shells to repell snails and slugs. The smaller flowers are male and larger ones are female. You can hand pollenate the female flowers from the male using a qtip or paint brush if you have less pollenators. I usually harvest those smaller cucumbers when they are immature for the best pickles. Green ones that are larger for fresh eating. When the plant is stressed it will try to ripen fruit wierdly & sometimes you just get a dud or misshapen fruit. They turn that orangy yellow color when they are overripe. You can still eat it, but it won't taste as good, or you can save the seeds from it for next year and make great compost from the rest. Just harvest the other fruit sooner. Don't get discouraged as each step is a learning curve and even the wierd fruit help you the next year either by growing nutrients by putting them right back in the planter bed, composting or obtaining you more free seeds. Don't transplant them at this point as squash have delicate roots and you will likely just lose them. Feed them and water them more.

 

[nao57]

OK; usually what happens is that if its bug damage, the holes, damage, etc will be in the middle of the plant, like yours. So yours is bug damage. The bugs go for the center of the leaves... USUALLY; there are exceptions.

Your cucumber being stunted like that is what happens when it started good and then there was an interruption in watering consistency. So the solution is more number of watering intervals per day and to be more consistent. Usually overall EVERYTHING grows better if you up the number of times per day that you water. I can't stress this enough! And a lot of the time you don't have to do more water; instead you are taking what you'd normally water before and then dividing it up among several times per day each. Works wonders.

Dehydration damage usually you see the damage on the edges of the leaves, and where new growth was going, it suddenly stagnates and shrivels up. So in the third picture, you see the yellow outline on the leaf's outside perimeter; thats showing you need to up the water a bit.

And you can have a blend of issues too, where if a plant had a lot of water and nutrients it would start healing up bug damage quickly. But then it can't because there's not enough, and so when the bugs hit it, they aren't healing it up fast enough. And when small this is the worst because small plants, maybe the amount the bugs took at night was more than the plant grew that day. This is why you also want to be aggressive on growth and watering early in the year before the heat hits.

For us what did good to was to have the neighbor of the cucumber plants be something that could help shade them a bit too. Cucumbers don't seem to like full sun much and benefit from a neighbor plant helping them a bit.

 

[nao57]

So it looks to me like they are hungry and need to be fertalized. You have them in a fairly small planter for a squash with what looks like heavier materials in the soil. Add a potting mix with some aged chicken maneur or a good rich organic liquid fertalizer and make sure you are watering them enough. Next year you need a much bigger pot for cucumbers like a wine barrel, or put them directly in the ground full sun. They like a lot of water & don't do well in the cold at all. If their roots are cramped they will put out tiny flowers. Since the yellowing is around the edges mostly it is likely a nutrient, water or ideal temperature defficiency. If it is the very beginning stages of powdery mildew then you can buy a foliars spray bottle and dilute milk, water & dawn dish soap to spray on the leaves, add a bit of neem oil to repel pests. Spray it on at a cooler time of the day without washing it off so it doesn't burn them. Reapply every 10 days as needed. When it sets fruit ring with crushed egg shells to repell snails and slugs. The smaller flowers are male and larger ones are female. You can hand pollenate the female flowers from the male using a qtip or paint brush if you have less pollenators. I usually harvest those smaller cucumbers when they are immature for the best pickles. Green ones that are larger for fresh eating. When the plant is stressed it will try to ripen fruit wierdly & sometimes you just get a dud or misshapen fruit. They turn that orangy yellow color when they are overripe. You can still eat it, but it won't taste as good, or you can save the seeds from it for next year and make great compost from the rest. Just harvest the other fruit sooner. Don't get discouraged as each step is a learning curve and even the wierd fruit help you the next year either by growing nutrients by putting them right back in the planter bed, composting or obtaining you more free seeds. Don't transplant them at this point as squash have delicate roots and you will likely just lose them. Feed them and water them more.

Very nice comment. I like it.