Cucumber troubles this year

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Originally Posted by Annie

I need help with my cucumbers, they were planted first part of March, have grown great, have loads of blossoms and they are running everywhere. There are little cucumbers at the end of the blossoms. They were growing great but now they are turning yellow and dropping off. I have gotten about three nice ones. You know they grow cucumbers so fast that you go out one morning and have a bunch of them. Now they seem to just stay where they are and are not getting any larger. What is my problem? Now my next problem, I finally started getting yellow straight squash but the leaves have gotten white dots all over them that looks like a fungus. I have sprayed with an anti fungus with no success. I finally cut all the leaves off with the white spots, am getting new growth but noticed a few little white spot on some of the new leaves. It looks like spores. Any suggestions. Anne

It sounds like you may have nematodes affecting the roots. I have had that problem with cucumbers acting just like you describe and when I finally pulled them out the roots were nothing but strings of little knots. It sometimes gets in my squash plant roots too but not as often or as early.

It sounds like you have powdery mildew or downy mildew on your squash plants. It is very tough to stop once it gets bad. I spray mine making very sure to get the undersides of the leaves with a mild bleach solution; but all the leaves that are affected will die from this treatment but it is the only thing I have found that will stop it once it gets going good. I mix 8 ounces of regular strength bleach into a full gallon of water with a little dish washing soap added as a spreader sticker. Then spray the entire plant especially the undersides of the leaves with a fine mist very late in the day. Wait three to five days and repeat the process and also hit the mulch and ground under the plant then wait a day and start using a fungicide weekly to prevent it from coming back. I have waited so long before using this treatment that all the leaves were affected and the treatment nearly killed the plant because so few leaves were unaffected by the spray. If you catch mildew early before it spreads too much this treatment works pretty good.