Shriveling cucumbers

June 19, 2007 by Natalie (QSOgirl)

So I’m having a bit of a problem with my cucumbers. The vines are growing nicely, I think, and the plants are flowering like crazy. And every so often I find a tiny new cucumber starting. The problem is that a few days later, I’ll look for that little cucumber and find it brown and shriveled.

I think that I’ve been watering the plants enough– at least once a day. I try to make sure that the soil never completely dries out. But as I admitted in an earlier post, I think that I might have too many plants in one pot. There’s something like 8 vines in the one pot.

So I need some advice. Would it be enough to start fertilizing the plants (perhaps with so many plants in one pot, they’ve used up the nutrients from the original fertilizer–which was supposed to be enough for 3 months–in the potting soil) or am I going to have to sacrifice some of the vines so that I can actually get good cucumbers?

UPDATE (30 June 2008): I have written a post about hand-pollinating cucumbers complete with photos: https://vegetablog.wordpress.com/2008/06/30/stop-shriveling-cucumbers/

38 Responses

on June 19, 2007 at 2:05 pm jer

I have the exact same problem! My cucumbers last year wilted at the same stage yours are, and it looks like it’s happening again this year. If you figure this out, send me an email! Your blog is the closest I’ve come to finding any answers online.

I’m in Chicago – where are you? I wonder if it’s a climate thing?
on June 19, 2007 at 3:05 pm jer

I posted a question about this here:

http://ask.metafilter.com/65155/Cucumber-woes

It sounds like what you (and I) think are baby cucumbers may just be unpollinated female blossoms. I’m going to try hand pollinating this year. Read this article:

http://extension.oregonstate.edu/news/story.php?S_No=924&storyType=garden
on June 20, 2007 at 6:43 am gardengeekette

A friend of mine who has done some gardening saw my cucumbers (or lack thereof!) last night, and mentioned that the same thing happened when she kept a cucumber plant indoors one season. She suggested that the cucumbers might be shriveling because they have not been properly pollinated. I’m going to try the trick mentioned on my “Cucumbers” page (see the tabs above)– hand-pollinate the female flowers with male flower pollen using a paintbrush. It may be that because I am on what is essentially the fourth story of a building, the bees, etc. don’t find my flowers to do their thing.

jer– thanks for your comment. I’ll keep updating about this! I am also in Illinois, though further south than Chicago.
on June 20, 2007 at 6:45 am gardengeekette

jer- thanks for following up with your second comment! I didn’t see it after I’d posted mine! I’m glad that our answers agree, and I hope that your cucumbers stop shriveling!!
on July 2, 2007 at 11:12 am Karla

I’m having the same problem. Once the cucumber is almost the size of my pinky finger, they shrivel and die. I have many many beautiful flowers on the plants, but the cucumbers won’t grow. I know they’re being pollinated, since the cucumber starts to grow. I have them in pots on my deck and water them well once a day. My green beans and tomatoes are fruiting beautifully in the pots. Any suggestions are most welcome.
on July 2, 2007 at 11:13 am Karla

p.s. I’m in Michigan
on July 2, 2007 at 7:28 pm gardengeekette

I’m not an expert, and of course, I haven’t seen your plants, but I think that maybe the female flowers really aren’t getting pollinated. The female flowers actually have a baby cucumber behind them (I have a picture of one at the end of this post… And they do grow a bit (some can get quite biggish, as you said, pinky-sized) until the flower blooms. If the bloom dies unpollinated the baby cucumber will shrivel…
The links in the comments from jer, above, are very helpful.
on July 3, 2007 at 9:29 am jer

If last year is any indication, even unpollinated blossoms can look like they’re starting to grow, and then just die.

I’m happy to say that hand pollination is working this year – I’ve already got a few four-inch cucumbers out there now.
on July 4, 2007 at 12:33 pm gardengeekette

jer, I’m so glad to hear that your cucumbers are doing well! Mine are definitely responding to the hand-pollination as well.
on July 10, 2007 at 1:01 pm ausmith

It seems that I am having the same problem with my cucumber plants. There is a lot of the female blooms and the fruit is turning yellow. I spent some time with doing the hand-pollination but what happens if you don’t have any male blooms? I was able to harvest 4 cucumbers off one plant and now the rest of new female blooms don’t produce any fruit.

What can I do?
on July 12, 2007 at 4:00 pm gardengeekette

ausmith, I don’t know if I have any good advice for you… This is my first garden ever, and it’s quite an experiment. I’m not sure there’s anything you can do if there aren’t any male flowers… Unless you can contrive to transport male cuke pollen from a friend’s plant! I really hope that you can figure out what’s wrong with your fruit…

I do know (from reading The Bountiful Container… see my post about the book here) that if a vine produces a fruit that has fully-grown seeds, that vine will stop producing more fruit. But I don’t know if that’s your problem or not…
on June 30, 2008 at 12:09 pm Stop shriveling cucumbers « Vegetablog

[…] flowers, more about that below), and then the baby cucumbers would shrivel. I posted about it in the “Shriveling cucumbers” post, which has consistently been the top-viewed post on this blog. Between the suggestions of a friend […]
on July 10, 2008 at 8:35 pm Eric

Thanks for this post, and the various people that answered. I’m surprised how hard it was to find an answer. But I’m crap at formatting web searches.

Glad to hear that the shriveling is normal. And here I thought it was just the hot, dry summer we’re having here in Austin. Our cucumber is on the ground outside, and it looks like a three or so have been successfully pollinated. It was frustrating (and a little worrisome) seeing so many baby cucumbers shrivel up!

But maybe we’re on our way! Yay!
on May 26, 2009 at 3:29 pm samantha

my cucumbers keep shriviling up and my neighbors have been getting 2-3 full cucumbers a month the bees have been reaching my plant and they are still shriviling up, its so irritating. i had 2 plants and 1 died even though ive been watering it once a day.what do i do????? HELPP PLLEEAASSEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!
on May 26, 2009 at 7:17 pm gardengeekette

samantha: you may want to go to your local garden center and ask an expert there– they will very likely know more about what to do for cucumber plants that aren’t producing than I do.
on May 28, 2009 at 5:59 pm samantha

gardengeekette: Thanks for the advice and i went to the home depot and they had a lot of valuble information and they also suggested that i go to a plant nursery and i will be going soon. If you find out before me about what is happening to my cucumbers please write to me on this vegetablog.

Tanks a lot – Samantha
on June 20, 2010 at 2:42 pm angie

I’ve had the same problem in the past and the paintbrush trick works well. To the poster who said her plant has no male flowers: I’m pretty sure you can transfer pollen from your tomato plants or eggplants with the paintbrush to the female flowers on the cucumber plant. I’ve done this a number of times and it always worked great! Good luck!
on July 15, 2010 at 7:19 am matt

my cucumbers were producing and there is still alot of female flowers left on the vines, however hardly any male flowers bloom anymore. Can anything be done to promote male flower growth.

cheers
matt
on July 15, 2010 at 8:45 am gardengeekette

Hi Matt, thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment!

I’m not a gardening expert (this blog is just my own personal record of gardening experiences & research), so I don’t really have an answer for you about how to promote male flower growth. You might want to contact your local garden center, local Master Gardeners, or university extension unit for help! If you get an answer, please stop back and let me know!
on June 24, 2011 at 8:14 am teadrinkinfool

I found this
Basically what it says about male flowers:
Environmental stress influences sex expressions, with high temperatures and long days promoting male flower development. Higher plant populations and low moisture will also promote production of male flowers.
Hope that helps if anyone’s having problems this year=)!
on August 4, 2011 at 6:24 pm Mary Benson

If there is already a small cucumber forming, is it too late to hand pollinate?
on August 5, 2011 at 8:04 am gardengeekette

Hi Mary… if it’s just a tiny cucumber, behind the flower, that’s the normal shape for the “female” flower. If the cucumber has started to get bigger, that means that it was pollinated and will continue to grow into a cucumber you can eventually pick and eat. Yum!
on August 5, 2011 at 10:42 am Mary

Thanks. They get an inch or inch 1/2 and then shrivel.
on August 5, 2011 at 11:11 am gardengeekette

I think you’re just seeing the un-fertilized female flowers. You might want to try hand-pollinating. I’m not an expert, so if you still have trouble, contact your local Extension Office or Master Gardener group and they will be able to help you better than I! 🙂
on April 4, 2012 at 10:46 pm Michael E. Lazzaroni

Mike L
My female cucumber buds are shriviling up BEFORE they ever form a bloom. I have plenty of male flowers and bees. The vines look healthy.
on July 25, 2012 at 7:05 am Roy

I think what most of you are dealing with is actually bacterial wilt, which in a small garden setup should be fairly simple to get rid off. You need to sanitize your soil and ensure you do not harbor cucumber beetle. That little pest is a HUGE nuisance.
on July 25, 2012 at 11:54 am gardengeekette

Hi Roy,
Thanks for the info. Hand-pollination solved my issues (see the related post linked in this post), so I think that poor pollination was the culprit this time around. I will keep bacterial wilt & cucumber beetle in mind for troubleshooting future gardening problems, though!
on July 26, 2012 at 3:49 am Roy

Out of interest sake, what variety of cucumber are you planting? The more commercial varieties do not require any pollination. If you have a seed company that will sell them in smaller quantities, you could try these. In that case as long as your watering, fertilisation, pest and disease control are in check, you will have enough for the whole family. Try http://www.johnnyseeds.com/c-35-melons.aspx Good luck! Oh yeah, keep the pests away, it’s so much harder trying to control them after they have established.
on July 26, 2012 at 9:52 am Roy

Sorry, forgot to point out that I am talking about greenhouse varieties (not requiring pollination). Open field is of-course a different story. Thanks for not “killing” me guys!
on July 26, 2012 at 1:30 pm gardengeekette

Hi Roy,
That year (2007), I was growing the Burpless variety (purchased seedlings at the local nursery) in terra-cotta pots on my balcony.

Last year (2011), I grew cukes from seed (I can’t remember there being a specific variety on the packet… they were fairly generic seeds) in a pot next to my in-ground garden. Aside from our resident groundhog obliterating the plant shortly after it started producing, the cucumbers grew pretty nicely.

This year (2012), my cucumber seedlings died before I even got them into the ground, so no cucumbers in my garden this season. 😛
on July 27, 2012 at 4:28 am Roy

Hi gardengeekette

Sorry about 2012. Did you figure out why they died? Will you try again? As for 2011… I always say, we sometimes must share with wildlife. I must share my sweet corn with jackals and porcupines, while a little bird called Francolin loves tomatoes, then recently it’s hares that have discovered my fine beans. The good thing is that as passionate gardeners, we always find a solution.

Your 2012 crop, sounds like you bought them as seedlings again? Have you tried direct seeding? It works so well and is not complicated at all.
on September 7, 2015 at 6:46 pm fallsview

2015
Same problem here in Niagara with the little cukes turning yellow and dying.
Thanks for the info on the female flower having a small cuke at the base.
My cucumber plants are direct seed into the soil with plenty of natural fish compost.
My tiny veg. garden is on the corner of a flower bed and it is possible that the cucumbers may not be compatible with certain of my flowers. Next spring I will dig a veg. only plot.
I have had an abundance of cukes other years; long English burpless always. I also wondered if the compost might have contained something bad this year.
Thank you for your ideas.
on December 1, 2015 at 2:34 pm Jejo

Hi I planted some cucumber plants in my garden but most of them did not make it. Only 1of them produced a female flower but it shriveled and the plant died. Could u pls help me
on March 28, 2016 at 2:08 pm Natalie (QSOgirl)

I’m sorry that your plants died, Jejo! I had no success with my cucumber vines last year, which was so disappointing. Many things could have caused the vines to die: bad weather conditions, unhealthy starts, not enough or too much water, etc. Better luck in the future!
on May 20, 2016 at 10:16 am Sheri

I’m so happy to have found this. The same thing was happening to my baby cucs. Now I know I must try hand pollinating these babys. Thanks.
on June 24, 2016 at 10:26 pm Jorge

My female cucumbers are dying and I was going to try to pollinate them by hand but I do t have male flowers. What can I do to help my plant produce fruits.
on June 25, 2016 at 5:17 pm Natalie (QSOgirl)

Yes, you need both male flowers and female flowers. For more details see my other post, which is also linked in this post: https://vegetablog.wordpress.com/2008/06/30/stop-shriveling-cucumbers/
on July 25, 2016 at 12:29 am Ashley

I’m in pan handle of FL and I have the same problem and at first I didn’t have anything planted close by ,it still happened .I now have 3 other plants close by using the same tress .Anyone help please🙏🏻