Hi Jim,

I will also be very interested in the answer to this question. I am getting ready to do cukes and have had problems before. I have seen the Victory Garden do a segment recently suggesting that the only success they have had is when they use that white covering over their cucumbers. Maybe someone else can explain that in more detail?

:-)

The best way to avoid serious cuke beetle problems with cucumbers is to grow them under row cover. This used to be a bit of a problem because most cukes require pollination to set fruit and the row cover also keeps pollinating insects out. That's why parthenocarpic cuke varieties like diva are a big deal -- they don't require pollination for good fruit set and so are ideal candidates for growing under row cover.

I've tried the radish as cuke beetle deterrent but haven't bothered with that in recent years. I find that my cuke beetle problems were severe only in the first couple of years of gardening in my current location. I just don't have as many as the years have gone by. Also, I find that some cukes seem to resistent the diseases that cuke beetles carry a bit better than other. Finally, I just don't expect a single planting of cukes to take me through the entire season. I plant in late April and expect those plants to bear typically into early August before they give up the ghost. Another planting in late June will give me cukes into August and September.

I tried radishes without any success whatsoever. The best weapon I have found without using chemical (organic or otherwise) methods is to vacuum them with a hand vac daily. The cuke beetles tend to congregate in the flowers in early morning, and are pretty easy to catch. It's a
p-i-t-a, but it works well.
Mrs H

What I have seen, a report on this in Fine Gardening magazine, is that icycle radishes planted next to your cucurbits helps repel the Cucumber Beetle. Only one person reporting this and that was at least a couple of years ago.

A lot of this info on companion planting to reduce pests is based upon sound info (initially), but then gets hopelessly distorted into innaccurate folk wisdom over time.

It is said that marigolds are good at repelling certain pests as well. I saw some research on that and it turns out there is one species that does have some beneficial properties, but they are not the 'typical' marigold everyone plants. Even then the number of marigolds required to provide noticeable protection was substantial. Add to this the variable pest pressures from year to year and you have something that is difficult to pin down effectiveness wise.

Of course, way back when some folks noticed their marigolds repelling certain pests, they probably just regarded them as marigolds, not a particular variety/species. It was just what they had in their area. Today we have seed catalogs with stock from all over the planet and hybrids and all that which changes things up considerably.

So, could be that the icycle radish is effective and the others aren't. Who knows?

I tried planting radishes with my squashes last year. The radishes were not icycle radishes. The radishes didn't help a bit with cuke beetles. As mentioned above, certain kinds of cukes stand up to the beetles better. Diva and Marketmore 76 are two of them. I've had some success using Pyola, an organic pesticide. Rototilling in the spring and fall is suppose to help. Also,cuke beetles usually hit upstate NY between mid-june to mid-july. You can stagger the planting of cucumbers so the plants are big and can survive the "attack" or are too tiny for the beetles to bother with.

I did plant the icicle radishes all throughout the garden, and around cucurbit plants. I didn't notice any decrease in numbers of the pests that are particular to those species.
Mrs H

I just had 3 of my squash seedlings destroyed by the cucumber beetle. The only information i've found on prevention states you should cover the plants with cheese cloth early on.

Any tips for keeping them off squash?

Rotenone will kill cuke beetles, but it kills the beneficials too. The non-organic solution is Sevin. Again, it'll kill the beneficials too. I've wondered if planting crysanthamums (sp?) would have the same effect and keep the cuke beetles away.

I noticed them a few days ago for the first time and I had a ton. Since then I have been picking them off by hand every night, I have a headlamp I wear. They are just hanging out on the edges of leaves and/or humping so its easy to squish them by hand. Tonight there were about a tenth of what there were a few days ago and the damage has diminished to non-noticable from one day to the next. I use the same method on Japanese beetles and it works fine. If you have a lot of plants it is a lot of work and also you need to get over the squeamishness of squishing bugs with your bare fingers. I have only five plants they are after so its trivial. The Japanese beetles on my grapes are another matter, I have 70 plants. But I can still control them that way with maybe 20 minutes of work per day during the peak.

Scott

Here's my observation from a first time gardener (although it is working out pretty well.)

I had hundreds of small brown beetles (the same size as the cuke beetle). I had planted bunches of radishes wherever there was room and lots of Sweet Alyssum, both with the intention of being trap plants. I freaked out when I saw this massive invasion of these beetles almost overnight. I took a deep breath and went to bed. The next morning, the beetles were entirely on those 2 plants mentioned above and hardly any other plant. They completely ate up just those two plants, then took off after mating (that's what those hundreds of bugs were doing the few days here). What I think I witnessed was companion planting at work!!

Then, I had cuke beetles and a bunch of assasin bugs showed up. The cuke beetle population plummeted after a week or so. I think if I had sprayed, then there would not have been prey for the assasin bugs to settle in here. The AB are still here doing a great job. They seem to like the dill weed that has bolted as an attractor flower.

This "dance" going on in my garden is really amazing.

I haven't found a good way of controlling the adult populations long-term (am trying to figure out whether rotenone is acceptable for my market garden or not, what a pain, it probably isn't), but I do have a tip taught to me by the excellent gardener I apprenticed with, to keep the cuke beetles from eating the seedlings of your cukes or squash. (Presumably melons etc as well.)

I usually plant cukes and squash in hills, four or five seeds to a hill, and the tip is: before planting the seeds, I mix a handful of wood ashes into the soil right where I'm going to plant them. For some reason this affords protection for the early seedling stage. (And only that stage unfortunately.) The one time I did not do this half my seedlings were eaten to death. It's worth doing!