Cucumber, etc. Water Needs

[digitS']

Maybe I should be waiting until after that tropical storm clears off the Atlantic seaboard for this but Bigredfeather had a question about a cucumber problem and transplant shock/water needs came up. Rather than hijack his thread and because I so awkwardly just edited this thing to be a little smaller - which means it will be smaller whenever photobucket gets around to allowing the edit - I thought I'd post this info as a different topic.

I had a link to this table at Texas A&M last year but the link is dead now. It took a little searching on that website to find it so I just swiped it and will post:

Relative to cukes: Look at the high water needs for them by comparison to watermelon! I'm not even sure that Texas cucumber fields stay in production as long as watermelon. Maybe but watermelon would take a full season plus here and cukes begin producing much earlier.

See, you know why radish crops require so little water -- they are in and out in a flash. Pickling cucumbers are also harvested very early by comparison to the slicers. It isn't as tho' the plants require less water by the week. With days-to-harvest not taken into account, I'm not sure how much this table helps . . . Maybe I should find an authoritative accounting for that, then, convert inches/acre to gallons/square foot . . . Well, maybe not.

Anyway, it has been entirely by experience that I decided to grow my cucumbers nearest the sprinklers. They like it and don't like to be off where it is dry.

Steve

 

[baymule]

I didn't plant any cukes this year And I don't have room for watermelon

 

[bj taylor]

I've got a couple of cukes. hoping for good results. they get their water. they seem to do better for me if they get some afternoon shade. I try to put them on the east side of the tomatoes which grow so tall they give some of the pm shade.
melons are on my 'no-no' list, so didn't plant. I love a good watermelon

 

[SweetMissDaisy]

Nice chart. And good idea for your planting theory, Steve. Hope it works out well for you AND the cuc's!

 

[digitS']

This is about as melon-challenged environment as one could find and still be able to grow some of the fruit. After about 4 tries and, maybe, 1 modest success - I have been too disappointed to grow Sugar Baby watermelon. DW is not inspired by the yellow watermelon and I need to work on that since they seem to have significantly fewer days-to-maturity.

The 2 melons in my garden this year are the same as last. They are both from the University of New Hampshire: Goddess cantaloupe and Passport galia melons. I am so happy to have found these . Passport has survived growing seasons that have killed other melons and I've had them for about 6 or 7 years. Galia melons are similar to honeydews and it just does real well here. Goddess was new last year. Yep, I even have trouble growing cantaloupe but Goddess came thru like magic and was real nice & tasty.

Usually, cucumbers do fine. About 1 year in 10, they may just not get a good enuf start to grow much of anything.

These plants seem to have originated from wild plants in the "fertile crescent" & maybe down into Africa a ways. I have a little idea I should explore with some botany texts. It is that they may grow in seasonal stream beds, in canyons. An arid climate does have some rain but it may come and then be gone for long periods of time. Some streams may run for several months but eventually dry up. Depending on the orientation of the canyon walls, some places may have a good amount of afternoon shade. All vining plants have a little better ability to position their leaves to gather sunlight than do other plants. Just a little imagined fantasy garden . . .

Steve

 

[ninnymary]

Steve, are there any melons that you could recommend for my area? Do you think those two you grow would do well here? I love cantelope and would like to try growing it on a trellis. Of course I would have to make a hammock for them.

Is there any way you could make that chart a little bigger? It's hard for me to read even with glasses! I'd like to print it and put in my gardening binder.

Thanks
Mary

 

[digitS']

Gosh Mary, after I made the thing the size of a barn door and then had to shrink it on the 1st post! Okay, here it will be a little larger .

About the melons - I really think that either would be okay for you. It is hard for me to imagine that they wouldn't. My garden climate might be similar to New Hampshire but the melon plants must have the same requirements for Growing Degree Days no matter where they are grown.

Steve

we have to wait for the photobucket gnomes to do the editing & there doesn't seem to be a set amount of time it takes. i've never known just what they are up to . . .

 

[ninnymary]

Thanks Steve! I know you can do anything on this computer. As far as the melons go, it's the lack of heat that I'm worried about.

Mary

 

[digitS']

That's it, Mary.

The farmers like the term Heat Units.

They seen to be calculated the same as the Weather Service's Growing Degree Days. There's nothing absolute about it but a plant doesn't do much growing when it can't muster anything more than a weak shiver.

Our weather the last couple of days must have been tuff on the little melon plants that have just gone out in the garden. We have had lots of wind and 30 swings in temperature, morning to afternoon. It was chilly at dawn this morning but then there's this 80 blast of heat and dry air by mid-afternoon! Sure they are getting some Heat Units but I doubt if it is doing them any good with so much wind.

Steve

 

[Jared77]

I agree about the heat that Ninny's worried about. Last year I had more cukes than I knew what to do with. Planted them, put a ring of aged horse manure at the base of each plant about 3-4" all the way around, covered that with straw mulch and watered when I remembered. I was giving away plastic shopping bags worth of cukes to the food bank and what wasn't really great examples bags was put into bags and I took over to my neighbors for her critters (chickens, turkeys and rabbits). Mostly because they'd get so big that they were mushy on the inside.

I know the manure helped but the warm nights that we had I think really pushed them along.

Kept cursing myself for NOT planting watermelons because it would have been a banner year for them.

The year before that when summer never really seemed to hit I had a decent crop of cukes but nothing like last year. Of course that was the year I planted watermelons so all I had were hard bocce ball shaped sugar babies that were all white on the inside when I cut into a few of them.