My cucumber plants are plush green but the little cukes are not growin

Merelyn sale
by Merelyn sale
  5 answers
  • Liz Toone Liz Toone on Jun 23, 2017

    There is a troubleshooting section in this guide:

    http://www.almanac.com/plant/cucumbers

  • DZW DZW on Jun 23, 2017

    If vines bloom but don’t fruit, something is probably interfering with pollination. First, make sure that you see both male and female blooms. Male blooms usually appear first and then drop off, so don’t be alarmed if this happens. Within a week or two, female flowers will also appear; each one has a small cucumber-shaped swelling at the base that will become a cucumber. If you’re still not seeing those swellings turn into fruit, you may need to do a bit of hand-pollination.

    Several pests bother cucumbers. Squash bugs may attack seedlings. Slugs like ripening fruit. Aphids can colonize leaves and buds. Straw mulch helps keep slugs at bay, as can trellising vines to get the fruit off the ground. Vines are also bothered by cucumber beetles, which chew holes in leaves and flowers and scar stems and fruits, but worse than that, they spread a disease that causes the plants to wilt and die. Powdery mildew is a disease that leaves white, mildew-like patches on the leaves. Apply fungicides at the first sign of its presence. To minimize disease spread, avoid harvesting or handling vines when leaves are wet.



  • Jason T. Lee Jason T. Lee on Jun 23, 2017

    if you see little cucumbers but they aren't getting bigger you need to water them more. If the flowers aren't changing into little cucumbers you have deeper issues, good luck

  • Merelyn sale Merelyn sale on Jun 24, 2017

    Thank you very much.

  • Cheryl Cheryl on Jun 24, 2017

    Debbie is right. At this point, it isn't the watering. Female blossoms have very small cucumbers and we're both guessing that's what you're seeing. If they end up shriveling, the flower didn't get pollinated. Same with the rest of the squash family. Welcome to the world of no bees.... Look up hand pollination.


    I was an organic veggie gardener for years, but have never heard of a cucumber being pollinated, growing a bit and then just totally stopping. If not enough water, they'd just grow skinnier than they should and extra water will make the new growth larger.


    I'm having pollination problems with almost everything now. Not one cucumber got pollinated last year. But I also have a neighbor who sprays his yard for mosquitoes using a professional backpack sprayer - and they have tons of bee attracting flowers - more than anyone else around. I've said all I can to them. They think I'm the crazy one. And he has a landscape business.....