I’m Charlie Nardozzi and this is
the Vermont Garden Journal. Eating
cucumbers is a great way to keep cool during the summer. In fact, cool as a
cucumber isn’t just a phrase to describe your personality. The inside of a
cucumber fruit can be almost 20 degrees cooler than the outside air on a hot
day.
Cukes are easy to grow, but do have
two big problems: poor pollination and the cucumber beetle. Most cucumber
varieties have separate male and female flowers. They need bees or you to
pollinate them to get fruits. If the bees aren’t flying due to hot weather,
clouds, or just few of them around, you won’t get proper pollination.
The
solution is to grow varieties that don’t require pollination such as ‘Diva’ or
to play cupid. Here’s how. In the morning take a cotton swab and swish it
inside a male flower (the ones with straight stems behind the blossom). Then go
to a female flower (the ones with a small cucumber behind the blossom) and
swish it there. Viola- pollination!
Cucumber beetles not only cause
damage to the leaves, flowers, and fruits, they spread bacterial wilt disease
which causes the plant to wilt and die prematurely. Control the beetles with
sprays of spinosad or pyrethrum.
Now for this week’s tip, want to
get the best flavor from your tomatoes? Perhaps add a little sea salt to the
soil.
Check out the research from Rutgers University at the Vermont Garden Journal at VPR dot net.
Next week on the Vermont Garden
Journal, I’ll be talking about hydrangeas!
For now, I’ll be seeing you in the garden!
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