Vegetable Gardening (57 page)
Figure 8-2:
Pinch off the ends of vines to keep them in bounds and mature your fruits faster.
The cucumber-family responds better than any other vegetable family to extra doses of manure and compost. Cucumber-family crops love organic matter, so add a generous 3- to 4-inch-thick layer of compost to each planting bed. Sometimes pumpkin plants vine out of old compost or manure piles, which is evidence of how much this vegetable family loves manure. If you don't have a source for manure or compost, work in a handful of balanced organic fertilizer, such as 5-5-5, around each plant. To help increase the fruit count and size, add a side-dressing of the same fertilizer after the plants begin vining. Chapter 15 discusses side-dressing and fertilizer in more detail.
Figure 8-3:
Supporting melon fruits with a sling helps make trellising the vines easier and makes for simpler harvesting.
Water, water, water!
Cucumber-family crops are like camels; they're almost 95 percent water at maturity. Without a consistent supply of water, your melons won't taste sweet, your winter squash and pumpkins won't grow large, and your cucumbers will taste bitter. To get the best-sized and best-tasting vining crops, give your plants a consistent supply of water. The general rule is to water so that the soil is wet 6 inches deep. If you're growing your crops with black plastic mulch, consider placing a soaker hose or drip irrigation hose underneath the plastic to ensure that the water gets to the plants. (See Chapter 15 for more watering ideas.) After the soil has warmed, mulch around the plants with a 3- to 4-inch-thick layer of hay or straw to help conserve moisture and keep weeds away. (You don't need to mulch with hay if you're using black plastic, however.)
If you want the sweetest melons, water consistently until a week or so before maturity and then reduce your frequency of watering; the melon fruits will have less water and taste sweeter.
The great thing about this group of vining crops is that after they start growing and running to their hearts delight, they shade the ground, preventing weeds from germinating and keeping the soil moist. They're their own best friends!
Ensuring proper pollination
Proper pollination is a key to growing successful cucumber-family crops, which can pose particular problems. Because most cucumber-family vegetables have separate male and female flowers on the same plant, they need Mother Nature's help to pollinate the female flowers and produce fruit.
Most of the problems that I hear from gardeners — like zucchini rotting before it starts growing, too few fruits on squash plants, and misshapen cucumber fruits — are due to poor insect pollination. Bees are the solution as well as the problem: Honeybees, bumblebees, and many other wild bees carry out pollination, but they're finicky. For example, bees don't fly when the weather is cloudy or too cool. Also, native bee populations are declining because of a variety of environmental and pest problems. Fewer bees mean fewer chances that your flowers will be pollinated. And each cucumber-family crop flower opens for only 1 day.
So what's a gardener to do? Either try to attract bees to your garden by growing a variety of bee-attractive flowers and herbs or else pollinate the flowers yourself! And no, you don't have to buzz around and dress up in a bee costume to fool the plants. Here's a simple way to pollinate crops if you're having trouble getting fruit:
1. Identify the male and female flowers on your plant (see Figure 8-4).
Don't be discouraged if you don't see female flowers at first. Male flowers form about a week ahead of the females. The female flowers will come along; just be patient.
2. Before noon on the morning that the male flower first opens, pick the male flower and then remove the petals to reveal the sexual parts of the flower (the stamen), which contain the yellow pollen.
Figure 8-4:
Male flowers are long and thin, whereas female flowers are short and have a minifruit behind their flowers.
3. Choose a female flower that has also just opened and swish the stamen around inside that flower. Repeat this process with other female flowers, using the same male flower for two to three pollinations.
Voilà; you've done it. Congratulations, have a cigar!
If your squash and pumpkins are growing close together, and bees cross-pollinate them, will you get a squakin? Not this year at least. Cross-pollination happens when the pollen from one variety or type of plant goes to a different variety or type of plant. Only the same species of
Cucurbits
can cross-pollinate each other. For example, a cucumber can't cross-pollinate a pumpkin. However, squash (such as an acorn and zucchini type) and pumpkins in the same species can cross-pollinate each other. (You can tell the species by looking at the second word in the plant's botanical name.) However, this cross-pollination won't affect your crop for this year. Your acorn squash will still look and taste like an acorn squash, even if it was pollinated by a pumpkin flower. However, if you save the squash seed and plant it the following year, you may get an interesting creation. But that's why gardening is fun!
Controlling pests and diseases
Dampening the success of a good vine crop is tough. Once established, vining crops don't have any more pest problems than other vegetables. Modern, disease-resistant varieties help ward off fungi, bacteria, and viruses. However, you still need to watch out for powdery and downy mildew, wilt, and viruses that affect all vegetables (see Chapter 17). Also, stay out of the vine crop patch when the leaves are wet because you can easily spread disease as you move. Finally, remember that common insect pests, such as aphids and cutworms, attack young plants.
Here are a few diseases and pests that particularly love vining crops: