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Vines & Rinds: The Curious World of Cucurbits
90 Plays1 year ago
This week on Hort Culture, we're diving headfirst into the fascinating world of cucurbits! These versatile veggies, which include everyone's favorites like pumpkins, squash, cucumbers, and melons, are more than just delicious additions to your table.
Join us as we talk about the best practices for growing a thriving cucurbit patch in your own backyard, no matter your climate. We will also be discussing how to keep your cucurbit seedlings safe from common threats.
So, whether you're a seasoned gardener or a curious newbie, this episode is guaranteed to give you a case of cucurbit fever! Tune in and get ready to learn all about these incredible members of the gourd family.
An IPM Scouting Guide for Common Problems of Cucurbit Crops in Kentucky
Sustainable Disease Management of Cucurbit Crops in the Home Garden
Growing Cucumbers, Melons, Squash, Pumpkins and Gourds
Questions/Comments/Feedback/Suggestions for Topics: hortculturepodcast@l.uky.edu
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Transcript
Introduction to Hort Culture
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Hort Culture, where a group of extension professionals and plant people talk about the business, production, and joy of planting seeds and helping them grow. Join us as we explore the culture of horticulture.
Growth Timelines for Tomato Plants
00:00:14
Speaker
What is up plant people are cotyledons are true. Well, at this point, yeah, they're true leaves out there. Truly. Been with us since the beginning as if we've been here that long, but many, many nodes, many nodes, truly. Tomato, tomato plants are very small right now. They're just not getting true leaves. I'm a little worried that I started late this year.
00:00:38
Speaker
though remember what we remember what we said right it's better to later late and early and early so and that's what i was thinking it but i'm worried because my neighbor i'm looking over the fence and his to make sure bigger than mine and i'm not happy about it but they got stunted with that late with our last frost celebrating his misfortune i'm just saying tim
00:01:00
Speaker
Listen. Tomatoes are pretty yellow now. Tim is saying heh heh. If he's on T-E-B's, tomato on anti-drugs, welcome to my TED talk. He is. I
Post-Work Plant Care Challenges
00:01:09
Speaker
mean, there's a non-step program for planting your garden too early. Yeah. It's juicing. Step one, listen to Ray. It's juicing and it's not after they're picked. That's exactly right. That reminds me of somehow we were talking about this little horror agent group chat, and you all are plant people too.
00:01:25
Speaker
It's like my entire job is to answer questions that people have about their plants and how to do things better, what's wrong with it, how to deal with this insect. And yet when I get home and I'm no longer officially an agent for the night, all that knowledge somehow drops out of my brain. I'll be like, I don't know what to do. What do I do? I need to call somebody.
Guidelines and Expert Advice for Plant Care
00:01:49
Speaker
And I'm the one I would call. So I don't understand what happens to the brain.
00:01:55
Speaker
once you kind of leave this office. It must be what it is. Give it away, give it away now. I need to call my extension agent. My extension agent is Jessica, who we've had on the podcast before, and she calls me about stuff sometimes too. So it's like, what is it about that knowledge? I don't know if anybody else is out there. Follow protocol, Alexis. Don't think, call your agent. Follow the plan, follow the plan. That's true. Any critical perspective of your own, I cannot emphasize that enough. Just call your agent. Zero research on your own. Call your agent. Call her up and say, what do I spray on this?
00:02:24
Speaker
Yeah. How do I save my tree? It's a stump. Here's the list of all the things I already sprayed. Here's a picture of a dead plant. What happened? I poured diesel fuel on it. Is that not kosher or what I'm saying? But anyways, let's get to the root, so to speak, what we're talking about today. Nice. And I'm going to ask you each this question.
Cucurbits and Their Animal Comparisons
00:02:47
Speaker
What is your favorite cucurbit? Ooh. Yeah.
00:02:54
Speaker
Oh, I would, I'm going to say the golden retriever of cucurbits, which is summer squash, just yellow, no weird colors. Just yellow. Just the golden retriever of cucurbits is summer squash. That's, that's an accurate representation. It takes on the, you know, whatever flavor you put to it. Whatever brown sugar that I put on. And it's golden. It is golden, literally. Yeah.
00:03:19
Speaker
I had that, I was ready for that. I mean, I like it. No big deal. I was ready. Brett? I was ready. I was ready for that. Well, I would say my favorite cucurbit is probably, ooh, it was to eat it? Is this the... Just your favorite cucurbit. I gave no stipulations. To eat it. Wow. For me, it's to eat it. My stipulation is must be edible. I like where this is going. I like it. I would say probably cantaloupe.
00:03:45
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And I'll put a caveat on that. There is a lot, a lot of bad cantaloupe out there. But good cantaloupe is, it is the texture of it. It's like this weird, almost creamy, firm, but
Cantaloupe Experiences and Humor
00:04:06
Speaker
soft. Almost like ass cream, yeah. Yeah, it's the best. And the best, I'll give them a shout out.
00:04:12
Speaker
former extension specialist, he works with the greenhouses now, Chubin Saha, when I worked at the South Farm, grew some melons that were the best cantaloupe I have ever had before or since. It changed my whole vibe on cantaloupe.
00:04:32
Speaker
I would say my favorite cucur bit starts with a joke, which is why did the watermelons get married? Why? Because they can't elope. Because they can't elope, right? I thought you were going musk melon, but I didn't know how you're going to fit that in. I'll give you another cucurbit joke. Okay. How do you fix a cracked pumpkin?
00:04:59
Speaker
with a pumpkin patch. Oh my God. Stop. Stop. I feel like we peeked out early on this. What is even there more to say on this episode? Nothing. We can add nothing to this. I'm hoping to develop a few more Cucur bits as a result of this podcast. Pulled that one out. Proud of you. Proud of you. Josh, what about you? He just getting warmed up. Since he's talked so much about food, I got to give a shout out to the loofah,
Origins and Uses of Loofah
00:05:23
Speaker
you know? Scrub a dub dub.
00:05:25
Speaker
Yes, Lufra. Look at you not going the route of food. I'm really shocked and surprised by that. Well, I use that for cleaning up after I eat because there needs to be a lot of scrubbing. Like if I eat a sandwich, it's just I need to take a shower. Josh, I love that you called this out. And just so we're clear.
00:05:44
Speaker
This is something I did not know, you know, it wasn't common knowledge. You're talking about a loofah, like the thing that we use to scrub ourselves, exfoliate, OG, you know, natural exfoliating thing. It grows like inside of a gourd-like structure. Not in the ocean. And is dried out. It's not, yeah, it's not a sea cucumber. It's not a sponge. Yeah, it's closer to a regular cucumber than a sea cucumber. There we go. We grew them on the first one that I worked on, Coastal Georgia.
00:06:14
Speaker
took them home and bathed with them. It works people. It's good for cleaning your dishes and stuff too. Yeah, we had them all over the house. Yeah, throw it in your compost when it's getting weird and you got new ones. Do you guys remember what was the craze a few years ago, the apple gourds? It seems like, I don't know what made me think about this. Apple gourds. We're talking about mining crops.
00:06:34
Speaker
But everybody was growing like the apple gourds and they really look like an apple and when you painted them up red, they were amazing. Were you guys around for that? Before my time, I could have been early.
00:06:50
Speaker
I do remember that ray read that the robinson i think is that the robinson research center. There they did they had some trials of them and and i thought oh yeah another gimmick but i saw them painted up later. Amazing they they look like apple gourd so it's always interesting to me that you know speaking of cucurbits.
00:07:09
Speaker
the wide variety of plants that are included in their vineings, shrub tops, you know, some of them are 40 days, some of them are like 70, 80 day plants, but there's such a wide variety of plants. That reminds me of like how there's a lot of grafting that can go on there. Yes, absolutely. And I remember a grad student was telling me about like,
00:07:31
Speaker
I think they were grafting like cucumber rootstock with like some kind of melon. And you get and it's like you get this melon, but it tastes like a cucumber. And I was like, well, do you want to do that? Ruined it. What would be the motivation again there? Yeah. I was like, wow, that's exactly. No, thank you. No, what's your favorite? Doesn't mean you should. Alexis, did you say what your favorite was already?
00:07:59
Speaker
No, but I will tell you about them. I have a love obsession with little tiny gourds, just little tiny. The weirder looking, the better. I want them to look like there's a kind I have and I like them because you never really know what you're
Decorative Gourds: Gremlins
00:08:23
Speaker
going to get. They're called gremlins.
00:08:25
Speaker
And they're little, like the size, about the size of like a softball, depending on, they're all different shapes and all different colors. And they're just, every single one is unique. And I think they are the cutest little things. And when I see them out there, I'm just like, look at their little gourds and they are so precious. And you know, you know what I've done with them every year I've grown them, which is, it's only been two years, but you know, I only had space for them for two years is I give them on them and talk to them.
00:08:54
Speaker
Yes. Wilson. What I do with my private time is none of your business. Do not judge her. No, I give them away. Like, I just love, because, you know, everybody is, by the time gourds are ready, it's like the beginning of fall and people want to decorate their front porch or their, you know, with their gourds, they could put them like inside in a bowl on, you know, on their table. If they're into that, I don't really decorate. That's not who I am as a person. I get my Christmas tree out on Christmas Eve. If I remember like,
00:09:24
Speaker
But I freaking love giving these little gourds away because people are so excited and they can just put them anywhere and they're so cute and they're white and they're green and they're yellow. Are they the kind that you can get with like the little craft bell of straw like the 10 inch craft bell and they're like in like the scale is proper for that? I feel like mine are more weird. Like the ones I grow are fucking. I don't know if it's on purpose but they're like they look like little aliens and they're not so cute.
00:09:52
Speaker
Yeah, I'm looking those up. There's a apparently a cultivar of gremlin gourd called super freak. And I'm guessing that's one that you probably avoid. She's super freaky. She's super freaky. And I thought, you know, if they fall, if you're
00:10:08
Speaker
You know, let's say you have a car and you put down the seats in your car because you need to be able to haul a bunch of things. Uh, and you know, maybe a, maybe a gourd falls down below there and lives its life for roughly six months. It's not going to rot. And I feel like that's something that, you know, zucchini and cucumber cannot say. So I once had a cucumber spend, it didn't let go six months. Uh, it was discovered. Wow. Judgey.
00:10:35
Speaker
It went a while. Well, no, I don't mean it like that. It wouldn't have gone that long if not for the smell giving away its location under one of our seats of our car. So yeah, I appreciate that for sure. To speak of Jessica, again, I remember they were growing like birdhouse gourds at one time and when she got, I think whether she got a new car or something, they hadn't grown them in at least a year and she reaches underneath the seat in her car and there's a perfectly
00:11:05
Speaker
like hollowed out, beautiful birdhouse gourd that was not dry before it went under the air. And she was like, oh, hello, this has been here a while. So, so yes, we're talking about the cucurbit family, which if you're not familiar, as you just heard, is very broad from edible to
00:11:31
Speaker
something useful on the skin or in the kitchen and also just cute little things you can put on your porch steps. It puts the gremlin on the porch step. They're aggressively cute things. Aggressively cute is like how I roll.
00:11:50
Speaker
Seems like if you have one of those gremlin gorge you have a million of them. Is that the case, Alexis? Yeah, it's amazing. They're highly productive. It's amazing. Not that I want to. You only need like three plants. Do you want to purge them at night or? You can't get water off them. You can't fertilize them. Oh, nice. Yeah, you can't fertilize them.
00:12:11
Speaker
But, so we're talking about the cucurbit family and the beautiful thing about talk, we talk about families. If you listen to any of our episodes talking about rotation and how important it is, we talk about rotating by family. And that is because a lot of the same issues happen within a family as is, you know, life in general.
00:12:32
Speaker
Whether
Cucurbit Rotation and Disease Prevention
00:12:33
Speaker
you're not, you're going loofah or zucchini or watermelon, a lot of those same diseases and insects are gonna affect it. But also that means the same cultural practices, which can, whether you wanna grow something new that you've not grown before, a lot of those same things apply. So it can make it a little bit easier to grow a different crop if it's in the same family. So there's two ways, two sides of the coin there to look at it. But just wanted to give you- So rotating by family, we just mean not to grow
00:13:01
Speaker
two things from the same family in the same area, back to back. Cucumbers and squash would be too closely related because they have similar insects and disease problems. And so the rotating out would be something from a different family, like the one that tomatoes are in or the bean family or something like that. I think that once that clicked for me, everything else was much easier to understand.
00:13:24
Speaker
And that's even the needs of the things are not different from each other too. Right. Yeah. So talking about those, I usually like to talk about like some cultural practices a little bit about growing those just because really important as whether you're growing on a small home garden scale or commercial scale and really doesn't matter what you're growing.
00:13:48
Speaker
So basic cultural practices can get you really far without having to do a ton as far as treating for things. We always say an ounce of prevention is a pound of cure type situation. So with cucurbits, they tend, and at least Kentucky, because we're so humid here, they get a lot of disease pressure. They get a lot of insect pressure too, but talking about diseases,
00:14:11
Speaker
So one way I tell people is if you have the luxury of space, which not all of us have, but if you have the luxury of space, spreading things out a little bit more so that they dry. We talked about that before, just like we've talked about pruning tactics before, it's the same kind of concept. And that can really cut down on a lot of your mildews. If you do spray, it makes them more effective. And you just can get down in there into the canopy a lot better.
00:14:36
Speaker
Yeah, and you mentioned sprays. One thing, and it's going to be a recurring theme over where, you know, we're talking about maybe doing an individual crop sort of podcast series sprinkled throughout the episodes. But one common theme that you're going to see us talk about is a lot of the garden chemicals and just
00:14:56
Speaker
fungicides and disease control methods in general, they are not curative. They will not cure a plant once disease is established. So it's important to remember on cucurbits and all other garden crops for that matter is that they, some of them do a pretty good job at preventing disease spread, but they do not cure diseases. So that's something to keep in mind and it's super important with
00:15:22
Speaker
you know all of your vine crops because Alexis already mentioned the relative humidity at ground level tends to be really high these are things if you think about a summer squash they have a large canopy they shade themselves very nicely but that leads to foliage that's wet for a long period of time they tend to
00:15:37
Speaker
during the wet season get a lot of diseases or have a high potential for diseases. So just remember that if you call your local extension office, they're probably going to tell you that a lot of the disease controls. Number one is cultural things like spacing, space them out, let the sunlight in, let it dry. But the second thing we're going to talk to you about is
00:15:58
Speaker
products, whether it's chlorothalonil, copper, mancazab, any of those common fungicides that we will talk about with homeowners, all of those are, they're not curative, they're preventative. So just keep that in mind. It's a big theme in cucurbits as well as other garden crops like tomatoes. It's very, very important to remember that these, the cucurbits in general are just kind of a really warm season crop.
Warm-Season Crop Requirements
00:16:21
Speaker
When I think about this whole classification of
00:16:24
Speaker
plants. You know, we talk a lot about something like a snap bean. A lot of times you can get by with putting that in the ground at 50 degrees and do okay. But if you try doing that with a kakurbit, either transplant or seed, the seed's going to rot and the transplant is not going to like it. You're looking at more of a 70 degree temperature at two inches depth. So it's a 20 degree warmer soil temperature. It's pretty incredible with kakurbits. And when I think about giving those a good start, it's planting those first and foremost into
00:16:51
Speaker
to warm garden soil. They like it hot. Yes, they absolutely do. And of course, that impacts diseases and everything later in the season. But yeah, that whole class of chemical or not chemicals, this whole group of plants that we're talking about today. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of other plants. Go ahead, Josh. Oh, I was going to say, speaking of kind of cultural practices, something I've only ever seen in pictures,
00:17:18
Speaker
is people creating like kind of higher trellising systems of cucumbers.
Trellising Cucumbers for Better Yields
00:17:23
Speaker
I've never done that personally, but have you all ever seen that in-person done it? Yeah. Well, I remember you did something with your master's work, right? Alexis, that was like greenhouse, right? Yeah, I did greenhouse hydroponic cucumber production.
00:17:36
Speaker
So that was like they're hanging, right? Yeah. So like, um, you can grow in tunnels, uh, or greenhouses if you're doing like winter production and want to, you know, get squash and of some kind. So we did English cucumbers and drop strings. So very similar. If you've ever seen tomatoes grown on
00:17:55
Speaker
this type of system you drop string from the rafters basically and usually drop a single string down to one plant and then you Clip that plant up the string And so you don't have to get down on the ground to harvest it keeps the fruit a lot cleaner and you can get if you do spray which again you are gonna spray whether you're organic or not in Kentucky if you want you know if you want that plant to survive which that's a whole other thing I could talk about but to get survive for a long time to get
00:18:24
Speaker
chemicals in there so because your canopy is up and down it's a lot easier to to get in there and to to see stuff so. Cucumbers are so much more well formed when they're hanging. There's so much more perfect I mean in shape that's crazy. Yeah they don't you know raw a lot of times we get people who will bring in squash or cucumbers that you know have a rotten spot on them and sometimes that's just from sitting on the wet ground if it's rained for a week there's really not nothing you can do about it you can put some straw under them but
00:18:51
Speaker
sometimes it's a little bit too late in some cases. The reason I say if you want that plant to survive is because I think that people forget sometimes that these, to use the days to maturity of a crop to their advantage. So with some crops, like a pumpkin as an example, you're going to plant that a little bit later in the season. You're probably going to plant that in around June if you want that for your
00:19:16
Speaker
late September, early October sales, so to speak. But it takes all that time to get to a big product, but something like zucchini or summer squash is a pretty short window. So you can plant more than once. And so I always encourage people
00:19:31
Speaker
you know plant you know around derby day or whenever your last frost free day is when your soil temperatures are warm like gray said and then you know do another set a month or a month and a half later uh and by the time that first plant's kind of dying out just because you didn't want to deal with it you didn't want to spray it i get that
00:19:50
Speaker
Then your second one's coming on and as long as you're kind of maybe having them separated a little bit So if they're not infecting each other you don't really have to do anything and then you that'll get you through the season So seeds cheap enough in my opinion that that's an easy thing to do but yeah, yeah, I think in general with a you know reduced sprays or you're you know with a lot of these some of these plants you're fighting an uphill battle and so the idea of
00:20:14
Speaker
planning for reinforcements throughout the course of the season is kind of part of just part of the strategy that people will have.
Insect Vectors and Cucurbit Diseases
00:20:21
Speaker
And a big strategy more so than with just about any garden crop, and I see it year in and year out, is this concept of vectors when you have something like a cucumber beetle, which is there just about every year. There's some other insect problems, but I'll pick on the cucumber beetle. The evil. They transmit all of these diseases. They're a vector. They spread diseases from one point to another. So you're like, well, I'm trying to control diseases, not insects.
00:20:48
Speaker
Well, you're really trying to control one that will help in the control of the other. So that's an important thing to note. So then you're going to have those problems year in and year out, it seems like, in in cucurbits especially.
00:21:04
Speaker
And now some folks you just may have acceptable losses and that's fine. If you're a commercial producer, you may be on some sort of spray schedule, you know, a seven to 14 day spray schedule for those things. It just depends on really what your objective is, but just kind of be aware that, you know, when you were talking about diseases, a lot of times we're talking about insects too, especially with these fine crops.
00:21:24
Speaker
The two have a really heavy interaction with one another. And you'll know if you've had a, usually it's like bacterial wilt is the main one that we see that's vectored in cucurbits. And so it's bacteria, it plugs up the vascular system and it gets in there by the feeding of cucumber beetles. And so if you've ever grown anything in the cucurbit family,
00:21:47
Speaker
And even if you water it every day, maybe it's rained for a week, the soil's plenty damp, but the plant still looks wilted, that's most likely a bacterial wilting. It's so crazy and so defeating. Idiots. Rest when crushed by it. We are not in control here.
00:22:05
Speaker
Yeah, you know, like it's uh, it is a crazy experience. It is. It's very humbling. Watch your plant like melt into the ground and it's quick too. The leaves look good. The leaves look good. The plant looks good. Nice dark and green, but you'll just see a wilting collapse and you throw more water at it and that doesn't help. Yeah. Yeah. Those, those vascular systems are just plugged up with bacteria. So they're not moving water. So it's, it's wilting because it's not getting water. It's wild, but
00:22:33
Speaker
Yeah. So that's, if anybody just, somebody hopefully had a sigh of relief of like, they're not the worst gardener ever by their plant, just melting. We've all been there. Do you ever do the confirmation of what kind of cutting and then pulling apart to see the little like bacterial. Yeah. If you're, if you're, yeah, if you're adept at that, you can kind of see that if it's advanced or you can do the water method.
00:22:59
Speaker
You know, if you're used to looking for that and have a clear glass, you can see the vascular streaming in water. Sometimes it doesn't always work, but I mean, I'd usually have a clean knife blade route, you know, put it up against the stem and you'll see that gummy streaming. And that's a sure sign. I mean, there's lots of good websites that Extension has or lots of good YouTube videos that Extension has that shows that and home gardeners can easily do that test at home. If you see these symptoms of collapse,
00:23:25
Speaker
Even though it has a sufficient water. Yeah, josh. Um, that's that's a great kind of at home thing you can do to sort of diagnose It once you're to that point like once you're infected it's over like that's why you know Go ahead and plant another one. Uh, so if it's early enough in the season, which is
00:23:41
Speaker
what do you think ray like probably july you could still get away with at least in the central area of the state you could look at your days to maturity which varies a lot from let's say a vine and cucumber versus a spacemaster that's like 20 some days difference so then if i have a failure or
00:24:01
Speaker
I'm trying to plant my second round of summer squash and try to avoid squash vine bore, which is the bane of my existence in my home garden. If I'm trying to dodge some of those, you know, emergence of some of those insects or the primary infestation windows, if I'm doing a late planting, yeah, pay real close attention to
00:24:20
Speaker
days to maturity that becomes very important but yeah things like summer squash you can get a second planting uh cucumbers you can get a second planting if you pick those varieties that are shorter days to maturity yeah sure thing or if you want to grow a little gremlin gourds yeah the gremlin gore how many days yeah i'm kind of curious did you guys figure out how many days to maturity i may try some gremlin gourds i've never looked are they kind of that standard i just started mine so yeah
00:24:49
Speaker
But yeah, I think they're kind of like a June planting because they're fall, right? Like just like, gotcha. Yeah. Kind of ready at that right time. Yeah. I never know where I'm going to put them either, but, uh, on Johnny's, they say 95 days for their grandmothers. Wow. Dang. So you, I mean, that's pretty amazing when you're talking about a 50 days zucchini versus a 90 day and it's in the same general grouping of plants, but it's a double the dare. I mean, it's twice as long.
00:25:16
Speaker
to maturity for some of these uh like that ornamental yeah it makes me think of like winter squash because the skin's so thick yeah yeah kabocha i feel like the first time i had that was at Brett's house actually
00:25:30
Speaker
Didn't you all have like a bunch of kabocha squashes one time? Yeah, yeah. He kind of didn't want to do that. Yeah, that's how we do. We've been known to skate and winter squash from time to time. Are you on the barter system for kakurbits, Brad? We're growing a bunch of
00:25:53
Speaker
butternuts for a couple years. But yeah, we had and we had a bunch of other stuff too. Some of the otter lit the blue blue Hubbard dinosaur. This is a blue Hubbard squad. Yeah, yeah. Ray's referencing the trap crop phenomenon where you plant something that
00:26:14
Speaker
Bugs will walk over a cucumber to go and eat blue Hubbard squash. Blue Hubbard squash, yeah. Did you get Nettos or anything bread or have to do anything special in Lexington? Some people don't. No, we didn't. We've only had one year. We've only had one year where we had like squash vine borer as a major issue in our
00:26:39
Speaker
Butternuts, and other than that, we haven't had major issues, at least in my garden space. My experiences with bacterial wilt were actually at the South Farm on research plots and stuff. But yeah, I was a little nervous about doing it. I was like, oh, let's bring in a bunch of pests to draw them in. If they're not here yet, let's send up the one layer. But luckily, we didn't have too much. Dinner's done.
00:27:07
Speaker
This whole group of plants is, I mean, you mentioned South Farm that we're talking about today. Once again, more than any other garden crop, it's so weather dependent. Some years people, they'll do the same thing during a wet year and do the same thing during a dry year. In a wet year, you're just going to have all of these mildews and disease problems and for homeowners to
00:27:27
Speaker
properly spray, like apply fungicides, if they're of a mindset that they want to spray for diseases, it is very difficult without the proper spray equipment to get these cover sprays on at the right intervals. So frequency and the proper amount of active ingredient, all that. But in a dry year, you just magically have these beautiful crops. And the only difference is like the weather, more than anything, even more than tomatoes, I think about these vining crops is that some years, despite your best effort, you're just going to get
00:27:56
Speaker
hit really, really hard with diseases with this crop. And I get probably just about as many calls out of this group of plant as I do any other garden plants during the wet season. I just brace myself for all the vine crop. Everything with cucurbits feels like it happens like fast.
00:28:16
Speaker
Yes, you know, they go fast they go down fast they you'll look at a fruit and then hard man Dry hard That's the gourd motto I like it. Once again, I need a shirt. That's the title. That's the title
00:28:39
Speaker
The gourd growers need that. We need to be writing this down. I hope somebody... There's a whole magazine just about gourds, like a monthly magazine about gourds. Published by Alexis from her house. From the front porch. If only. No, someone else told me about that. She used to be a big gourd person, so got me on the train to live in the gourd life. The gourd life. One of the things about
00:29:06
Speaker
cucumbers in particular, but you know, cucurbits in general, you know what, when you plant tomatoes, and Creole, correct me if I'm wrong, if you plant a tomato plant deeper than where the stem is, deeper than the soil line, there are those little hairs on the stem that will can turn to root.
00:29:26
Speaker
You do not want to do that with a cucumber plant. No. In fact, I don't know in this group of, it scares me to try to transplant. I'm intimidated by trying to transplant like cucurbits overall because they are so delicate and the only way that I recommend usually for homeowners if they're going to grow transplants is to put them in peat pots where the entire pot goes into the ground because
00:29:48
Speaker
Even the process of trying to take that thing out of a plastic package, if you've grown it in a container, can destroy the roots. But yeah, Brad, the proper depth is really important, but they're also just, in general, super delicate. So think about that if you're wanting to- Ray, you just gave me a complex, because I don't- I'm- I feel the thing.
00:30:11
Speaker
About it at all the only plants are careful with their milkweed like I'm like That's oddly specific Alexis They do not like their roots to be messed with at all that is your curb it's too hard Washington zucchini. They'll just break off Don't do it right
00:30:38
Speaker
His hands are just too powerful, you know? I have tiny baby hands. The robot that can't hold the egg in his hand without squashing it. The vampire. That's right. I can't be delicate. I remember a couple, I don't know how many episodes ago, we were talking about like the concept of the raised bed.
00:30:58
Speaker
and that the raised bed doesn't mean that you build a little, doesn't have to mean that you build a little wood structure and fill it up with whatever soil.
00:31:07
Speaker
But that your family and lots of other families too would grow, I think cucumbers and other, maybe other cucurbits in, in a sort of raised bed kind of situation. Yeah. I mean, that's for a couple of different reasons. And we sort of touch bases on those here today, as well as the other day on the other podcast is a soil temperature, which, you know, needs to be very warm, much warmer than the average 50. It needs to be more.
00:31:30
Speaker
closely aligned with like 70 degrees. So if you mound up soil into a flat-topped bed two to three inches above soil level, you rake up basically a pile of dirt and then flatten that 24 inches or so across the top. You have your old-fashioned raised bed in the garden of soil, nothing else, just a raised mound flat top of soil. That increases the temperature a little quicker.
00:31:53
Speaker
because some of these things remember a long season, you can plant quicker. And also, cucurbits in general are very susceptible to root rots.
Advantages of Raised Beds for Cucumbers
00:32:02
Speaker
So you want fast germination and you want good drainage. And that's kind of inverse to the thinking about water because these things also need a lot of water, but they're also susceptible to root rot. So what that means is drainage, good drainage. Yeah, they are kind of needy, Alexis.
00:32:20
Speaker
sort of, but if you have a heavy clay soil, a lot of times you'll get a lot of those root rots or collar rots and they'll rot at soil level or root level. But yeah, that's a couple of the reasons why you would do that, Brett. And it's, in fact, my cucumbers are in the garden right now growing on little raised mounds and they germinated a little quicker. They were mounded up, the soil warmed up nicely. Yeah. Do you ever do any of the three sisters kind of, cucurbit's one of the three sisters, right?
00:32:49
Speaker
used to do that, but we had one commercial patch of corn and beans, and I grew to absolutely loathe white half runner beans, which don't find as much as full trellising beans, but they grow up the corn far enough that if you've ever had to go pick sweet corn and beans at the same time, you will never do it again. It's hot and it's sticky, it's uncomfortable, and you have all these things meshed together, but
00:33:15
Speaker
You did take advantage of the three sisters methods of planting and taking advantage of space and sunlight penetration and all these other things. Yeah. My question was always when you do go to harvest the corn and beans and beans, you're harvesting usually over time, corn not so much.
00:33:35
Speaker
You're good. You're I feel like you're stepping on your cucurbit and that was that would be maybe I just like I am a bull in a china shop or something But like I I feel like you step on the vines to get there so that was always my like frustration with that system but also I am not an indigenous person who came up with these great ideas and so I'm sure they did it better than we have so
00:33:57
Speaker
I do like the fact that they shade themselves and they really out-compete weeds at a point in the season. I mean, weeds, if you do shallow cultivation two to three times in a home garden, that's about all you're going to have to do. Once again, really shallow is the key there.
00:34:12
Speaker
you know, suppress the weeds, knock back the weeds for the first couple of emergent cycles of weeds. And then most of these things are going to shade themselves well enough to where they're going to out-compete weeds and it's not going to be a problem. Yeah, I generally find the stepping on it is a problem with cucurbits. I love winter squash and I'll grow them.
00:34:34
Speaker
but in part because I can grow it and I don't really have to go through there until after the stuff's mature. The vines are dying back. Compared to cucumbers where you're going in and harvesting every two or three days for however long period, man.
00:34:49
Speaker
I, it stresses me out. So I relate to what you're saying, Alexis, but yeah, I don't know. That trail scene like Josh brought up earlier. When I see those pictures, especially like kind of commercial scale, I think the first one I ever saw was like, uh, some, some location and like East Asia or whatever. I was like, that seems like that's the way.
00:35:09
Speaker
of what, Josh, what did you see as far as those systems? Like cucumbers upon trellises, you know, like that kind of structure. It's a photo, so I couldn't quite investigate how it was constructed, but like the person could just walk through and it's like, you know, do you want to put the money into the labor of trellising or the labor of harvesting? So like, because it's easy, I would...
00:35:33
Speaker
Right. As someone who both picked and trellised for a lot of English cucumbers for months, the work in trellising can be really annoying, but when it's so much faster and easier to harvest because
00:35:53
Speaker
You're not, you know, bending over and you're stepping on your product. It's a great option for folks that don't have a lot of space, but yeah, they want a vining type, like cucumber, for instance. I like the fact that you can go vertical with stuff like that. And you can take advantage of capturing more sunlight, which generally means more fruit production. You can have a pretty Arbor that's covered in cucumbers or a little bit.
00:36:15
Speaker
The one thing is if you grow something that's going to be a heavier crop, like a melon, like a larger melon or a pumpkin or something, it needs some support. So that's cucumbers and like luffas are great. You know, they usually do fine, but anything, you know, too much larger they're going to need.
00:36:31
Speaker
support I've seen people use like for their melons like pantyhose and they'll put the fruit high it up onto the trellis so it's got a little bit of support there on it but of course that's more of a home garden scale but it's cute it's fun
00:36:48
Speaker
Going back to insects, you know, they're a big problem in cucurbits. We've
Row Covers for Insect Protection
00:36:52
Speaker
already kind of talked a little bit about that. Do any of you guys have any experiences with any of the row covers in vining crops as far as excluding the bad insects? You know, we want the pollinators. And if you guys have any experience with using row covers to sort of, you know, guard against things like squash vine bore, cucumber beetles, all the bad guys, although
00:37:12
Speaker
The guys that want to do that. Short answer, yes. On a commercial scale, Brad, or? Yeah, I would say simulating a commercial scale. Yeah, so there's actually an interesting project that's been going on at the South Farm for as long as I, yeah, for a while back to Mark Williams and Tim Woods and now date.
00:37:33
Speaker
Dr. Dave Gontheer, working with this stuff called, it's a type of netting. It's like an insect exclusion netting, which is more air permeable than row cover. But before that, the OG was a
00:37:47
Speaker
form of row cover in the same vein as what we've talked about for frost protection, but it's much, much thinner. And the general idea is very straightforward, which is in order for a bug to hurt your plant, it has to be able to get to your plant. So you construct a tent over your plant.
00:38:05
Speaker
that doesn't allow it in during key windows and you're just excluding and that that can it can be really impactful for certified organic systems that many times don't have good controls for things like cucumber beetles or squash fine bore or anyone who's just interested in reducing sprays and reducing times you know engaging in the field and
00:38:30
Speaker
There's an interesting interplay there between the potential outlying or discontinuation of some of the neonicotinoid products in the industry, things that are sometimes discussed in terms of their relationship to honeybee populations. Long story short, that stuff is
00:38:55
Speaker
horticulturally at least magical. It's like a crazy thing. You spray the base of the plant with this thing and whatever bites it will die. Put it in the water and it goes into the soil. Yeah. Soil drench it at transplant and the thing has like a bulletproof vest on. There are implications and science and all kinds of other things that we can, we can discuss on the back end, but I can say on the side of just growing it simply,
00:39:22
Speaker
It's pretty straightforward. This is an example of a societal issue impacting this and involved here. I think there was a lot of interest in that bug, exclusion, netting, and other things in anticipation that maybe our main defense is going to be no longer offered or available for use.
00:39:43
Speaker
The main thing is you put it on, you protect it. Sometimes then you take it off to let bees and other pollinators in to pollinate the crop, because that's one thing is if you exclude the cucumber beetles, you're also excluding the bees. And then back on, there's also been treatments and things where they will actually have a bumblebee box inside the actual tunnel.
00:40:08
Speaker
etc. But I mean the efficacy can be quite, we had success growing stuff like that. I love that for homeowners because they're dealing with smaller spaces and we already talked about it that it's really difficult to get a good effective spray into the canopy of some of these crops with home equipment like a backpack spray. It's really tough to get the pressure and the particle size does get the spray rolling underneath the canopy.
00:40:32
Speaker
But with the netting, you're just providing a physical barrier and there's no resistance. We talk about chemical resistance all the time. There's no resistance to the barrier. I mean, you know, it's a physical barrier. But I'm really interested in that and I recommend that a lot and talk a lot with homeowners. I have some homeowners using that.
00:40:50
Speaker
And now that they've got their timing down, they make almost no sprays by using those products. And it's just a small homeowner scale, but it's amazing the results that they're seeing with some of those garden covers.
00:41:04
Speaker
But the main thing, as you mentioned, is just letting your pollinators in late in the season. Yes, some of the guys are going to be around like cucumber beetles that is going to cause issues, but the issues will crop up, no pun intended, so late. They will accumulate so late in the season, it doesn't hurt you the same way that getting diseases established early does. I think it's really cool. These road covers are one of the greatest things you could think about
00:41:28
Speaker
when you have vine crops and things at home and how to properly use those and what did you guys just make sure that the edges and everything were pinned down or sealed real good. You got to tuck it all in either use you know bags of gravel or some way of anchoring even along the edge because you know where the whole goal here is to keep the bugs out and so if you do all this rigmarole and then you leave the end open well it's
00:41:49
Speaker
Yeah, there's gonna be some traffic on the exit ramp to get into the thing, but they're still gonna get in and spread that disease or cause whatever issues. Yeah, and I think there are definitely extension publications and other things out there about how to use those types of approaches, but it's a really cool example of that integrated pest management thing we've talked about before of using this physical exclusionary control. It's sort of the
00:42:19
Speaker
the technological equivalent of picking a bug off the plant, right? You're physically keeping it from getting there. Yeah. Yeah. It's not satisfying, but... It's not. No, you don't get to feel the little, you know, them bouncing off. With Japanese beetles on toothpicks, Alexis, the impaler. Yeah. Or bean beetles and you have a rock.
00:42:41
Speaker
Squash. It's hard to build up a biological resistance to a squash. Squash bug. Everything is a squash bug to you. Squash them all. Before we wind down, I wanted to share. So there was this one cucurbit, the cucurbit that got away. No, no, it wasn't the one that got away. It was I went to a seed swap here in Kentucky. I don't know.
00:43:05
Speaker
When I get the feeling that it was five years ago, it was probably 10 years ago. It was last week. Yes. Pre-COVID, post-COVID, there's only two times. It was, yeah, it was pre-COVID for sure. Pre-COVID. Wow. They had this thing there and I, you know, things that have absurd names, I can't walk away from.
The Fragrant Plum Granny Melon
00:43:25
Speaker
This person was selling this thing called a plum granny.
00:43:30
Speaker
Whoa. Googling as we speak. Plum Granny, sometimes called Queen Anne's Pocket Melon. Oh. So it is a very odd, I was like, what is this? And they'd be like, oh, it's Plum Granny. And I was like. It's so cute. Oh wow. So they are fragrant.
00:43:51
Speaker
Like the melon itself kind of smells, it wasn't as fragrant, I don't know, the ones I grew weren't as fragrant as I was expecting them to be. Technically they're edible, but like the whole vibe was that allegedly ladies in Queen Anne era England would carry them in their pockets as a sort of botanical deodorant slash perfume kind of thing.
00:44:19
Speaker
My grandmother always grew those and I don't never remember them having a good smell for some reason. Little round, like the little softball or little baseball look very pretty, but I don't think she ever did anything with them. But how did you run onto those? Did you say, Brett? I heard that word all the time. It was at a seed swap in Pikeville.
00:44:39
Speaker
Yeah, that would make sense. Yeah, somebody somebody had them and I they they didn't. I don't know if it was the end toward the end of the day or something. I came up and I was like, what is this? And they were like, you idiot, they're plum grannies. Sorry, really similar. They look similar and kind of morphology, definitely not color to like lemon cucumbers. Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of what they are. And then there must be any tradition in the east to grow those. And I'm not for sure why.
00:45:16
Speaker
Yeah, apparently allegedly the fruit smell really nice the ones that I grew not but I mean it didn't smell bad it just it was just like it would be like carrying a Small cucumber around like oh check this out. It smells delicious. It's like well
00:45:33
Speaker
I mean I guess. Southern exposure has them and it lists so fragrant, two or three can make a whole room smell like melons. There you go. Two or three. I've never tasted them. Maybe I was using them wrong. They did not taste good. They tasted, Josh, you were talking about crossing a melon with a cucumber and it's like a melon flavored or cucumber flavored melon. It's kind of like that. That's a good analogy for that actually.
00:46:03
Speaker
And they, they, that year the plants went downhill too quickly, I think, and maybe they didn't ripen to the full effect that they would have had as a, as a pocket melon. Yeah. Cause I think that was somebody was like, Oh, you know, it's a plum granny. And I was like, I don't know what that is. Like, Oh, like a pocket melon. Yeah. Yeah.
00:46:26
Speaker
They used to do that with like, um, citrus and like cloves and stuff, right? Uh, they would have that little pouch. But I think that was also like, they would pull it out and smell it.
00:46:38
Speaker
to in crowds for sickness because they thought that, you know, they had this. But I think it was also because people didn't smell great in crowds. So that was a way to kind of get through that. But anyways, apparently you could also do it with melons. Fun fact. That's just that's just that's just the Queen Anne's pocket melon.
00:46:59
Speaker
So does that mean you don't call that a wheelie? You smell in the winter though for sure because no melons. Yeah, but less sweaty, less hot, more bundled, giving it in.
00:47:12
Speaker
Accumulating the aroma Marinate is off season. It's like a cicada, you know, it's down below. I think the marinate took a turn. Yeah the pocket melon But yeah in there awesome. Well, uh That sounds great. Welcome to cucurbit if you've not cucurbit before
00:47:32
Speaker
We hope you learned something new.
Podcast Engagement and Closing
00:47:36
Speaker
If you learned about lufas or pocket melons or if you maybe your granny grew pocket melons and you want to diss us publicly you can do that by leaving us a review and dissing all of us except for Ray because we didn't know about pocket melons or you can. I still don't know what they're used for. I feel like I platformed plum grannies so I shouldn't get attacked but you two definitely should.
00:48:02
Speaker
Well, I think it's, you know, sometimes you want a melon, but you can't fit it in your pocket. Boom. Not the plumb granny. You're right. You're right in the right zone.
00:48:14
Speaker
I just, I think that's such a cute little name. Like I want to name a like a dog vat or something like a cute little dog plum grain. I'm glad. I'm so glad. I'm so happy you brought that up. I have not heard that term in the year. Deep, deep memory. Yeah, it was. It unlocked. I could basically kind of taste that mirror. You know how you have 3d memories that unlocked the 3d memory. Wow. It really did. I haven't heard that term in so many. Yes. The thirties. Thank you. Maybe
00:48:42
Speaker
But yeah, that's awesome. That's so cool. Yeah, it is.
00:48:46
Speaker
Well, if you want to tell us more about your experience with Plum Grannies, you can do that. You can shoot us an email, which is in the show notes. You can follow us on Instagram and shoot us a message on there at Hort Culture Podcasts. You can leave us a review telling us all your fun things or criticizing Josh and I, I guess, about Plum Grannies and our lack of Appalachian knowledge. Forgive us, we're getting there. But we thank you all for being here with us today. We hope you learned something new.
00:49:16
Speaker
And we hope that as we grow this podcast, you will grow with us and that you will join us next time. Have a great one.