A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Food Garden Forum Vegetable Gardening Cucumber help/advice please :)

Hi I'm new to growing cucumbers
I planted some seeds in a DIY style pot from a supermarket and they really took off really really well
I had to replant them today because they were far too crowded and gave them their own individual tub with compost so they could bloom even more
Unfortunatly they have gone very sad and floppy. There's no discolouration of the leaves though.
I can't understand why ;_;
Can anyone offer advice and help me salvage my beautiful plants?

Many thanks
K.Ko xx

I know this is probably a dumb question, but you did give them a good soaking right? If not, that could be it. I grew cucs for the first time last year and they are very thirsty plants. Might be when you replanted them, the dirt surrounding would have soaked up any water from the original dirt it was in.

Now if that's not it, did you mess with the root system much when transplanting or did you leave the whole root system intact from the original pot and just set it down in the new pot? If you did break off the old dirt from the original pot and/or you broke any of the little roots off in the process, that will cause the plants to suffer a bit. If the damage wasn't too bad, it shouldn't take them long to recover and start growing again.

Soak the b-jeesus out of them. Cheesey's right. I've never heard of transplanting cukes, but my experience is that cukes are the most forgiving off all veggies. Cukes are tasty water, right? Since they are in containers, you may want to consider moving the containers out of full, 8 hour, sun until they have perked up. Give them morning sun and afternoon shade until they get their root system established again.

As Cheesey noted, you disturbed the root system. The root system and the foliage work in tandem. The foliage photosynthesizes and makes sugar, the root system takes up water and nutrients from the soil. If your plants are still wilted after a day or two of soaking, you may want to wack off some of the biggest leaves. The root system just can't keep up with their demands.

Good luck!

I'm having the same issue - started cukes (Straight 8's & Summer) as well as Summer Squash in a small greenhouse with seed pods. Sprouts took off like wildfire, I removed them from the mini greenhouse once they were getting too tall and put them on the counter with 100 watt bulb over them for 12-14 hours a day. They stayed there for about a week with no issue - I misted every couple of days to keep them moist. Two nights ago I transplanted them all to a large container in my garage so I could start moving them outside during the day and inside at night. First night in the garage after transplanting they seemed a little wilty, (I attributed it to stress and overcrowding) by the second day their stems were totally listless about halfway up. The bottom half seems healthy and everything appeared to be alive and vigorous from about halfway down the stem into the dirt. I pulled a few to inspect the roots and nothing seemed rotted or slimy. I watered vigorously last night and expected to see the little guys recovered by morning but no change. Squash seem to be doing ok though. At this point my only option is to go to the local gardening store and grab some pre-started plants but I'm not sure where I went wrong with these guys.