- From the mildewed studios of Univest at the Lehigh Valley Public Media Center in Bethlehem, P.A., it is time for another failed cucumber episode of chemical-free horticultural hijinks, You Bet Your Garden.

Have you had problems growing cucumbers?

I'm your host, Mike McGrath.

And on today's show, I'll name the top three suspects, suggest some creative corrections, and explain how sunflowers might help save the day.

Plus, deerproof early spring bloomers and your fabulous phone call questions, comments, tips, tricks, suggestions, and miraculously mundane mediations.

So keep your eyes and/or ears right here, cats and kittens, because it's all coming up faster than you making a proud peck of pickles... right after this.

- Support for You Bet Your Garden is provided by the Espoma Company, offering a complete selection of natural organic plant foods and potting soils.

More information about Espoma and the Espoma natural gardening community can be found at... - Welcome to another thrilling episode of You Bet Your Garden, from the Universal Studios at Lehigh Valley Public Media, in the Christmas City, ding, dong, ding, of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Yes, I am losing it.

But that's been happening for a long time.

All right, we got a couple of special things on our show today.

The Question of the Week is about cucumber problems, and we will try to include most of the possible problems you can have growing cucumbers, and help you identify the specific issue you're having trouble with.

But before that, a couple more of your fabulous phone calls at... Samantha, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Hey, thanks for having me on.

- Well, thanks for being had, Samantha.

How are you?

- I'm doing pretty well.

It's a little bit rainy here in Scranton.

- Okay.

What can we do you for?

- So I just recently moved into a new house.

And as far as I can tell, there's never been a vegetable garden.

And I have a huge backyard.

And so, I'm currently trying to figure out what the best way is to remove the turf so that I can start a vegetable garden.

And one of the tactics I'm using right now, and I'm wondering if I'm on the right track, is I have four chickens that are kind of helping me dig around in the turf a little bit.

And then, I'm moving the chickens every two weeks, and then, placing cardboard over where they were, to, like, and I don't know where to go from here.

Or if that's even the correct thing to do.

- Moving the chickens around with fencing is called chicken tractor.

And it is a great way to prepare a garden, because the chickens will peck around and eat bugs and weed seeds, and stuff like that, and leave behind one of the most natural fertilizers on the planet.

Cardboard, just in and of itself, is not going to stop anything.

Now, how big a garden are you planning?

- It's only going to be about like 9x18.

It's going to be like an L-shape.

It's not going to be that big.

- Do you intend for this to be a raised-bed garden?

- I was trying to do it in the ground.

- Why?

- Just because... - Raised beds are always going to work better, it's a little more work up front.

But if you have a big garden and you tend it all summer long, you're constantly compressing the soil and making it harder for the roots of your plants to pick up water and nutrients.

The second-biggest human cause of plant death is big, cloppy feet compressing the soil.

So one of the huge advantages of raised beds is you never step on the bed itself.

You build it in a style that you can reach the center from either side.

So it can be as long as you want, but it should be no more than four feet wide.

So take it or leave it, but that's my advice.

First, you would get a lawnmower, and you would scalp this area down to below ground.

You want to see dirt blowing out the back of the lawnmower.

Then you would lay down big pieces of cardboard, like they ship refrigerators in, and do that, and then, cover that with your soil mix, and you're done!

To answer your question directly, what you would do is you would rent a machine or hire somebody, it's called a sod cutter.

And it takes out strips of sod.

That's how they harvest it, to sell sod in the spring.

And there might be some areas of your property that could use some sod, or you could put up a sign and you know, people can come and take it away, or you can simply pile it upside down and it'll turn into compost in a year or two.

Then the chickens go in, because now the subsoil is exposed and they'll be killing and eating everything that's bad in there.

And then, you would let them go at it until you figure you're finished, and you can do flat earth, or at that point, I would also lay down the cardboard and build raised bed frames.

You'll never regret having raised beds.

- Thank you so much.

I appreciate that.

- My pleasure.

You take care now.

Good luck.

- You too, thanks.

- Victor, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Hello!

How are you, Mike?

- I'm just Ducky, Vic!

How are you doing?

- I'm good.

I'm in Florida, and it's beautiful.

- And what part of Florida?

- I just moved in August from Fort Myers to West Palm Beach.

- Oh, okay.

What can we do you for?

- I've got a...

The Internet told me it's a century plant.

- Right.

- It looks right, but it is...

I sprayed it with Roundup, trying to clear the... - Oh, God!

Why?

- Well, it was an accident.

I had...

I worked at a golf course, and we had all these cactuses that were kind of sprayed with Roundup all the time, and I just assumed that it wouldn't do anything to it as long as I didn't actually hit it.

Well, I did hit it, so now it looks like a war zone.

- Yeah.

Roundup is a non-selective broadleaf herbicide.

So anything it... Any part of a leaf it hits, it's going to stress the plant and try to kill it.

If you're talking about grassy weeds, it's just going to slide off of them.

The only way to get the Roundup, which is also systemic, I mean, it's getting...

It's still pumping itself into the plant.

You got to water that thing over and over again, and try to rinse out the herbicide you used.

- Okay.

- Now is it just the one plant?

- Yes.

- And are the weeds surrounding it at the base?

Because I can't see them coming out of the structure of the plant itself.

- It's kind of like a vine.

It's not poison ivy.

It's just like the weed that's everywhere in the garden.

It's in the snow bush or something.

Indian jasmine.

It's everywhere.

- What you do is, again, you take a hose out to the plant, and you saturate the area where the weed is, and then, you just work the vine.

You know, I don't know if it's a vine that reroutes everywhere, or if it has one root system, but keep checking it out until you get to a spot where you get resistance, and then get right down there and pull slowly.

It would be even better if you had the water running while you're doing this, and the vine will come up.

And then, after that, I would suggest you figure out a way to mulch the area.

You want to go get an herbicide whose active ingredient is iron.

- Iron, okay.

- Iron, or you could get a spray bottle and fill it with regular white vinegar from the supermarket.

And just be careful to only spray it on the weed.

And if you're careful and you don't overdo it, the vinegar should not harm the plant, and the iron won't harm the plant for sure.

It probably could use some iron in the soil, but no more Roundup.

And sometimes these weeds look overwhelming, but all you got to do is, you know, be a little clever, do it correctly, do it in a cool time of day and take your time.

Be patient.

You can't just yank at the thing.

You've got to pull slowly and get as much of the roots out as possible.

All right, Vic, you take care.

Good luck to you, sir.

- Thank you, bye-bye.

- Bye-bye.

Now it's time for me to welcome a very special guest, my old friend Barry Glick, who runs Sunshine Farm and Gardens, or Sunshine Farm Gardens?

Yes, way up in the direct middle of nowhere.

And I have a special reason for inviting Barry to be on the show today.

Barry, welcome to You Bet Your Garden, man.

- Hey, Mikey, it's been about 30 years since the last time I was on the show, you were at WHYY.

- Well, the show's only been around for 25, but, you know... - Seems like a lot longer than that, man.

- Yeah.

So one... About a month ago, I was answering a listener question about plants that bloom very early in the spring.

And then I remembered your favorite plant, but I could not latch onto it.

It was like one of those crane things where you try to grab candy or a stuffed animal.

It just kept slipping out of my mind.

But I remembered your name.

I remembered the name of your farm.

And it was just like, you know, halfway home, I'm driving along, and thank God I didn't have a passenger because I just suddenly screamed, "Hellebores!

It's hellebores!"

So I thought it was long past time to get you on the show to praise this flowering plant that, well, you tell people when they bloom, and you can reassure them that deer don't eat them.

- Well, depends on where you are as to where they bloom.

I've got a lot of people that buy them on the West Coast and in Southern California, they bloom in December.

But for us here in the mountains of West Virginia, where we're zone five, we've been down to -27.

That's how hearty these plants are.

They could bloom, oh, into January, beginning February, beginning of February.

But their peak bloom is between mid-March and mid-April in zone five, even Philly area, I'd say mid-March through mid-April.

Now, this is your specialty plant.

Your nursery produces lots of other plants.

But what made you a hellebore fanatic?

- Well, I guess you could say it was the deer situation here.

We have 35 headed deer come through the farm every night, and they'd eat the paint off your car if they could.

And they're absolutely voracious.

So, they're not afraid of people.

They're not afraid of plants.

They'll try anything.

And I have now, in the last 35 years, built up my stock of mature seed-producing hellebore plants to six acres, and every single one was planted from a two-inch pot over the last 35 years.

They have never taken a single bite out of a hellebore.

- Now, what do you think it is?

Does it taste bad?

- No, I don't know.

Yeah, I guess it does.

I mean, you know, I bit into it once because everybody said, "Oh, they're poisonous, they're poisonous."

You know, you can't get past the bitter taste.

And people would say, "Oh, the maybe it's the leathery foliage."

But no, I had 450 cultivars and species of rhododendrons and azaleas once, and they destroyed every single one of them.

- Oh, yeah.

- I had 300 antique and species roses, and I think there's three left.

So they ate them, thorns and everything.

So it's not the tough leather foliage, it's obviously some type of alkaloid or principle in the leaves, and I always talk about when I grow up and have time, I'm going to take a handful of leaves, put them in a blender with maybe some alcohol or something like that, and make a solution and see if I spray that on other plants, if it created the same type of principle, and they would leave other plants alone.

But now, when it comes to other plants, we've resorted to seven-and-a-half-foot deer fencing, and we've got acres, acres of fenced-in areas where we grow our trilliums and hepaticas, and other sensitive plants.

The only thing they don't bother that's up in the same league as hellebores, and we should tell people the common name, they're known as Lantern Roses, because of the time of year that they bloom, and they're native to the Balkans and a couple species are native to the British Isles, but mostly mainly in Europe and the Balkans.

And what we have now are hellebores that are hybrids of hybrids.

So, instead of calling them the Oriental hellebores, or helleboris orientalis, the accepted nomenclature now is hellebore x hybridus.

- So what is the best time of year to install these plants?

- Any time the ground's not frozen.

I'm a big fan of spring planting.

I think that fall planning was something devised by garden centers that didn't want to have a large stock of merchandise over winter.

- Obviously, these plants are available in different sizes that reflect the age of the plant.

- Yeah.

They're long-live plants.

So if you're growing them from seed, it'll be 3-5 years before they start flowering.

But they're going to flower for the next 100 years after that.

Your facility, Sunshine Farm and Garden, is wholesale only?

- No, no, we have people coming from all over the place.

If you love plants, you're welcome here.

- Okay.

And you ship as well, I presume?

- All over the world, we've shipped and had visitors from every first-world country.

And some third-world countries, actually.

And your website is SunFarm.com?

- Yep.

- Barry, it's always a pleasure.

- Thank you so much for joining us.

- All right, brother.

Take care.

See you soon.

Bye-bye.

- All right, once again, it is time for the Question of the Week, which we're calling... Julius, in Horsham, Pennsylvania writes... Hmm.

I would not call this success, Jules.

With success, you get cucumbers.

With failure, you get egg rolls.

And a very old egg roll, and you don't get any duck sauce.

So unless you've actually seen them, we can rule out cucumber beetles, as the adults are a good size, around a quarter inch long, and appear during the day.

You can't miss them.

Striped cucumber beetles are the most common form of this pest, and they feed only on cukes and other members of the Cucurbit family, squash, pumpkins, etc.

Spotted cucumber beetles are more common down South.

They attack a wide variety of plants and show up much later in the season in the North.

Both beetles have similar life cycles.

Adults emerge from leaf litter in the spring, and the females lay eggs in the soil around newly-installed cucumber plants.

After the eggs hatch, larva emerge and chow down unseen on the roots of the plants.

Then they transform into adults who feed on the upside of the plants.

In addition to all this physical destruction, they transmit bacterial wilt, a typically fatal disease, i.e.

the plants should be quickly destroyed, and squash mosaic virus, which causes the fruits to look ugly and unappetizing.

Beneficial nematodes are a great strategy for prevention, as these microscopic predators will seek out the little larva and destroy them before they can become adults.

Other preventative advice is to only install good-sized plants.

Don't rush the season.

Floating row covers are also advised once you spot the first adults of the season.

For more information, read our previous articles on these pests and an informative Wisconsin Department of Agriculture bulletin that we'll link up to.

But I think we are almost certainly dealing with disease here.

Specifically a mildew, but not powdery mildew.

This disease of warm, humid and crowded conditions, as its name implies, presents as a white powder on the leaves.

It typically does not kill the plants, but can reduce the harvest.

And it looks like holy Hades in your garden.

Once again, crowding is a major cause, so be sure your plants have room for air circulation between them.

You'll get more cucumbers from two plants spaced well apart than from four you've planted too close together.

Powdery mildew does not linger in the soil.

It is delivered from nearby infected plants by the wind every season.

So if your neighbor is ignoring their powdery plants, yell, "What?

I shouldn't get any pickles because of you?!"

This disease has the most of those popular kitchen-sink cures that have been verified effective, including dilute solutions of whole milk and baking soda with oil added.

Lots more cool stuff about all of this at Wikipedia.

We'll include that link as well.

All right, cats and kittens, if you're keeping track at home, the score is two down, with one player remaining.

Downy mildew, the only plant disease linked to overuse of a chemically-scented fabric softener.

I make joke.

Downy mildew is one of a number of similar pathogens grouped under the category "water molds".

And these are nasty creatures.

I'm pretty sure this is what's afflicting our listener, as the first visible symptoms are clerotic spots on the leaves, appearing yellow to green at first, then progressing to bright yellow, and then brown and distorted.

As always, researchers say the condition is, quote, "poorly understood."

But plants that are placed out to early in the season suffer the most, as do plants that are crowded.

Is that ringing a bell with you guys?

A very interesting website called Plantophiles adds the observation that mites, whitefly, and aphids can all infect cucumber plants with mosaic virus.

So keep checking both sides of your leaves to see if you can catch sight of one of these little buggers.

All right, bullet-point time.

Cucumbers are probably the worst plant to put out early in the spring via seeds or plants.

It's best to wait until the weather warms up.

Plant in full sun, with more room between the plants than you think you need.

Plant in naturally compost rich soil.

Explosive chemical fertilizers like Miracle-Gro, Peters, and Osmocote force excessive growth that is very attractive to insects that carry disease.

Rotate your crops.

Never plant cucumbers in the same spot that plants had problems the previous season.

Researchers seem to agree that a rotation with sunflowers depresses disease problems.

Hmm.

Sunflowers always cheer me up.

Never wet the leaves when you water.

Let a hose drip gently at the base of your plants, or use drip irrigation.

Water in the morning only.

Don't let your growing plants lie or lay on the ground, trellis them upward to keep the fruits off the ground and their leaves dry.

Removed...

Remove diseased leaves promptly.

They ain't going to get any better.

Resistant varieties are available for all these issues.

So research your symptoms carefully and choose a variety whose resistance level matches your problem.

And finally, raised beds!

Grow in raised beds!

Don't be a flat-earth gardener!

Well, that sure was some interesting information about cucumber protection, now, wouldn't it?

Luckily for yous, the Question of the Week appears in print at the Gardens Alive website.

To read it over at your leisure or your leisure, just click the link for the Question of the Week at our website, which is still and will forever be... Gardens alive supports the You Bet Your Garden Question of the Week, and you always find the latest Question of the Week at the Gardens Alive website.

You Bet Your Garden is a half hour public television show, an hour-long public radio show and podcast all produced and delivered to you weekly from the Univest Studios at Lehigh Valley Public Media, in Bethlehem, P.A.

Our radio show is distributed by PRX, The Public Radio Exchange.

You Bet Your Garden was created by Mike McGrath.

Mike McGrath was created when he accidentally confiscated his neighbor's interocitor, accidentally pressed the wrong switch and wound up on the doomed planet Metaluna, in Technicolor!

Yikes!

My producer is threatening to give me a matched set of water molds for the holidays if I don't get out of this studio.

Woo!

We must be out of time.

But you can call us anytime at... Or send us your email, your tired, your poor, your wretched refuse teeming towards our garden shore at...

Please include your location.

I'm your host Mike McGrath, and I'll be putting up lights and gnawing my circuit breakers until I see you again... next week.