SaintP-Mine did the same thing. Finally the lone surviving cuke finally bit the dust too. I blamed it on the heat and it got some fungus as well as leaf miners. I gave up.

Cucumber are banned from me now. I tried and tried and gave up. :(

same here!
I had vine borers before they even got big enough to flower.
Somehow one managed to escape and grow sadly up the trellis.
I should put it out of its misery.

Also never had success with summer squash, except for a few fried blossoms.

Grow some malabar spinach in the summer. It's pretty and grows vigorously most of the year!

(sniff...sniff...) Okay, I feel much better now that I know everyone it seems has 'issues' with cucumbers.

I'm wondering if I should pick 'Junior' before he kicks the bucket too? He's healthy looking and about 3" long. It really should grow another 2inches, but who knows if it will make it till then?

Lucky for me I don't have to survive on what my garden grows or I'd be eating Lantana and Vinca for dinner.

I thought it was just me. I can't grow a melon, cuke or squash to save my soul. I use summertime to amend my soil in the raised beds and wait for cooler weather.

ok, it was quite comforting to read all this, as i just ripped most of my moon & stars watermelon plants out-- they'd been attacked by aphids and little green melon worms or some other worm i can't identify. last week i chucked all my squashes-- aphids, powdery mildew, and a few pickleworms all throughout their blossoms. i yanked 2 cukes yesterday because i was finding evidence of green worms on those, and finally gave up my much-beloved lemon cucumber vine, from which i did harvest 3 puny [1.5 inch] cukes. since they were small they were sweet, which was nice, but i was soooo looking forward to a bunch of fresh veggies! instead i have done nothing but support the local aphid-and-little-green-worm population!

i am still hoping my tomatoes and mini peppers make it, and i had luck with green beans, sugar snaps, and cowpeas. but holy bats, how do farmers do it? and, is it worth growing any veggies here? i've had luck with small tomatoes, but that's about the best of it...and honestly i'll take those anyday, since they are so much better home-grown...

--shelbey, the non-farmer

My beefsteak tomato in the pot is going strong, blooming and setting more and more fruit the hotter it gets. My cukes are tall and loaded also. I guess I inherited the genes from my father though he grew his in the grounf. Tomato is in direct sun and loving it. Cuke is portected until late afternoon from direct sun. They get watered twice a day and fish emulsified every 5th day. Linda

i had great luck with cukes this year, harvesting enough to make multiple batches of pickles and to feed a family of cuke lovers for 8 or 10 weeks straight. i finally ripped them out today, since i'm going out of town for a few weeks.

there are probably so many variables that determine success, but here's what i think worked for me:
- start them as early as possible
- pick smaller varietals. i had a lot of luck with the f1 hybrid 'cucino' -- self pollinating, all female flowers, and the cukes are ready to harvest just a couple days after pollination. i also planted a generic, burpee plant i got from the bigbox. it did really well, but i still picked them small, before they'd even formed seeds. despite the small size, i was picking a pound a day for weeks on end... it CAN be done!
-give them a fair amount of shade. my organic grower friend says that she used to plant cukes in the shade of corn plants when she grew them in washington state -- so, if they need shade in the pacific northwest, they need LOT of shade here. mine got three hours a day of sun and lots of bright light
-trellis them as high and tight as possible
-neem, neem, neem, neem. the stuff is amazing, the way it deals with fungal problems.
-lots of compost
-paper bags to deal with the pickleworms. the bags worked well, but only when it was dry -- after storms, the pickleworms (%#$*&^#$#$&^!@#@! things) actually ate their way through paper to get to the cukes.

My cucumbers, summer squash and melons were beyond pathetic. I finally ripped them out. They didn't produce much of anything and what they did grow looked so nasty I wouldn't eat it. The tomatoes did well, as did the peppers, okra and beans.

Maureen

Well any chance of growing cucumbers once it cools off some or not?

kirk

I ended up with two edible cucumbers -- and whiteflies, worms, leaves covered with black 'soot' and lord knows what other creepy crawly. A few cucs were just deformed - no telling what was in it.

After I sprayed the plant with Sevin (to stop the infestation from spreading to non-veggies) and then ripped it out of the pot and put it in a trash bag, I thanked God that I didn't have to support myself off the land and could drive to Publix for a salad...

Man, I'm so glad it isn't just me! This year was my very first veggie garden, and I nearly knocked myself over from patting myself on the back - all spring long, every squash, zuccini, bell pepper, tomato, etc... was thriving like it sprang right out of the pages of a seed catalog: then hot weather, rainy season, and damn reality set in. Oh well, I'm setting my sights on fall, and learning how to solarize those poor empty beds! Except for the eggplant - that's my new favorite thing ever! Every other plant is holding on by it's weensy green fingernails, and those dang eggplants just will not die. I have some that are so bug-eaten they hardly have a leaf left, and they honestly don't seem to care: flowers & fruits galore. Next year, I might try an all eggplant-and-cactus theme..... :)