This thing died in record time. We went on small vacation for a week and came back to find our cucumber plant suffering a serious aphid infestation. I sprayed it with some homemade anti-bug juice (garlic and chilli-pepper water, more or less) and that seemed to help reduce the amount of insects. But the cucumber plant didn’t recover and in the end I removed it to reduce any risk of the disease spreading to other plants. We had tomatoes along side it in the greenhouse and I didn’t want those to get infected as well.
I suspect Cucumber Mosaic Virus, since it’s known to be spread by aphids. I’m not really sure, since this is my first experience with an unhealthy plant (last year everything went smoothly and we didn’t really have any sick plants).
Seeing as CMV can spread to other plants like courgettes, pumpkins and tomatoes, I decided to completely remove this plant, even though it was still producing a few small cucumbers. I pulled out everything, dug out the roots a bit, and cleared any leaves from the ground. I put it in a garbage bag and threw it away somewhere outside the garden facility. You can transmit the virus quite easily (just by touching one plant and then moving to another) and it can linger in soil or compost, so I didn’t add it to the compost bucket.
The spot where it was growing now has a table on over it, and I won’t grow anything right in that area this year. I actually don’t know if I’m just being paranoid, or if this drastic action is necessary. But might as well play it safe. This plant died in the space of about 2 weeks and I don’t want that happening to other plants.
Since I’ve just started this blog a couple months ago there hasn't been much traffic. But if people ever starting looking at this site, maybe somebody can give me their opinion as to what happened to this cucumber plant.
Cheers.
--------
Edit: After some research, I found the real reason this plant died.
 |
| 28 days later. Infected. |
Seeing as CMV can spread to other plants like courgettes, pumpkins and tomatoes, I decided to completely remove this plant, even though it was still producing a few small cucumbers. I pulled out everything, dug out the roots a bit, and cleared any leaves from the ground. I put it in a garbage bag and threw it away somewhere outside the garden facility. You can transmit the virus quite easily (just by touching one plant and then moving to another) and it can linger in soil or compost, so I didn’t add it to the compost bucket.
The spot where it was growing now has a table on over it, and I won’t grow anything right in that area this year. I actually don’t know if I’m just being paranoid, or if this drastic action is necessary. But might as well play it safe. This plant died in the space of about 2 weeks and I don’t want that happening to other plants.
Since I’ve just started this blog a couple months ago there hasn't been much traffic. But if people ever starting looking at this site, maybe somebody can give me their opinion as to what happened to this cucumber plant.
Cheers.
--------
Edit: After some research, I found the real reason this plant died.
No comments:
Post a Comment