Hi All!

This year is my first year of gardening. I had NO idea my garden would actually take. At this point I have HUGE cucumber, squash, tomatos, pole bean plants. I put the cucs on the last row with the purpose of letting them run. However, they have really run. They are now spreading left and right, the left is fine but the right taking over my garden, crawling up my tomatos and peppers. How can I avert them or make them stop...can you put cucs on stakes for them to crawl up and if so how? Thanks so much for all serious answers

Next year, plant your cucumbers along a fence - or create one for them (piece of chainlink or chicken wire between two posts for example). They will vine through the fence and up; this keeps them off the ground, they're easier to water, and you simply pluck them off the fence as they are ready (easier on the back!). My father in law does this with full size table cucs and it's awesome!! We're planning to do this with our pickling cucs next year.

You can stake them up by using pieces of wood. (see if Wal*Mart carries them) or cut back some of the vines. Good luck to you on such a successful garden.

Hi - For this season, your best bet is to move the plants so they don't go in the direction that you want. You can cut them, but this can cause the plants to die prematurely due to dissease. The easiest way is to just move the ones going to the right to go to the left.

Next season you have two options:
A - Grow on a trellis or fence - You can buy garden trellis netting 6' high from specialty gardening store/catalogues. Then put some posts in the ground, hang the netting and once the vines start growing, train them to go up the netting. this is great because the cucmbers get better air flow, and don't sit on the wet ground - so you get nicer looking and healthier fruit.

Option B is easier - buy a space saving variety - these are hybrid seeds that only grow 4-6' vines, but still produce the same size/quality of cucumbers. They have different names, but I've seen them called "bush" or "space saver".

Burpee - www.burpee.com sells both the bush type seeds and they used to sell the netting as well.

Good luck.

Just stand guard at night. When they try to make a brake for the right, stomp on them and create squash! The rest will learn from the lesson and retreat.
Seriously though you should be able to lay the vines to the left. If not, then simply trim the plants in that direction.

Well hellp fellow gardner. I have been an avid gardner for quite a few years now. I have ran into almost every problem there is, so I have learned along the way. A few years back I decided to grow cucumbers too!! I made a seperate garden for viney produce and then put my other veggies in another garden below that with a little walkway landscaped path in between to spruce it up a little.

The cucumbers had MORE than enough space, but yet I learned the hard way, they grew out of the garden, across the path into my other garden, were strangling my tomatoes, beans, peppers, etc....I finally just started cutting them back. I gave them sticks and stuff to wrap around to try and help stop the madness. I had pumpkins in the same area as them and would you believe they grew about 20 feet out of the garden. We had to mow around the vines!! We have a large backyard. I have a fence around my other garden so the rabbits would stop eating everything, would you believe I had cucumbers growing through the little holes in the chicken wire type fencing. They were the funniest looking veggies.

So the fact is, it doesn't matter how much space you give them, they will take it all up. They grow and grow and grow. I don't know how it will work for you, but when I just started cutting them back, it did NOT hurt them. So that way I kept them under somewhat of control for the rest of the seaon.

I love to grow cucumbers because I love canning veggies, and homemade pickles are so good!!! Best of luck to your garden and cucumber plants!