Q. My cucumbers are wrapping around other plants in my garden. What should I do?
A. Cucumbers should be grown vertically. We use T-Frames with pipe or wire, and strings (baling twine) on which they grow up.
In your situation, I recommend you get some 8′-long 2″ X 2″ stakes, put them in the ground about 15″ apart near every plant, then take your cucumber vines and gently unwrap them from the other plants and guide them around the stakes. You may need to put a nail in occasionally and tie the vines, so they don’t slip down.
Also, you should take off the sucker stems that grow from every leaf node on the main stem. Cut them off after the first female flower, which is usually at the first leaf.
If you don’t prune your plants in this way you will soon have a terrible mess of vines everywhere. the cucumbers will be eaten, trampled, diseased, etc., and your yield will be small.
Go to the Group site – https://www.facebook.com/groups/2304852529528161/ – and see the photos of gardens grown vertically. The main picture on the home page shows tomatoes in a greenhouse, but we do tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers, squash, small melons, pole beans, eggplant, and even peppers this way. And we often also do it right in the dirt, with no greenhouse.
And the yields are many times greater than traditional methods in the same amount of space.
