Are your cucumber leaves turning yellow? Yellow-ness in cucumber plant and leaves indicates variety of problems, including issues with water, light, environment and nutrients. In this article, I will teach you what the reasons are and how to stop them. Let’s dive in.

I love cucumbers so much. They are always greenish and crunchy to eat. There greenish color often signifys that they are healthy. However, when they start turning yellow, even the best lover of cucumber don’t rave over them. Thus a sign of yellow in cucumber is translated as a problem because it makes them unhealthy.

The yellowish-ness of cucumber leaves is caused by various problems, diseases, and pests. Many are from the soil, while other can be as a result of climate, treatment or storage. No matter which it is, watching your once greenish cucumber plant or the cucumber leaves turn breaks the heart of every gardener or farmer.

1. Too Much Water

As much as cucumber needs water to grow and perform better, one thing it detests is excess of water. When watering your cucumber, you should make sure you are not actually killing it. Excess water causes cucumber root to rot in the ground and blocks its ability to effortlessly absorb nutrients needed for it growth from the soil. Beside this, excessive watering makes the soil to be damp and breed diseases that can easily infest the cucumber plant and make its fruits or leaves to turn yellow.

Other effect of excessive water on cucumber plant are prevention of food production, stress on the cucumber plant as a result of rotten roots that can no longer supply nutrient to the plant.

How do I water my cucumber plant?

There is no perfect way of watering cucumber plant. The generally rule of thumb when it comes to watering every other plant applies. Water your soil enough to get it moist not wet, not damp, not swamped but moist. Generally, if your soil is moist, you cucumber plant may never have any challenge and your cucumber leaves may never turn yellow.

Just like too much water can cause a problem for cucumber plants, so can too little water. Cucumber plants have a large leaf, this makes them to lose a lot of water. Cucumber fruits also have high water content and grow quickly, thus cucumber plants need a lot of water to produce healthy and crunchy cucumber.

2. Little Water or Lack of Water

Just like too much water affects cucumber plant and causes it leaves to turn yellow, that’s they same way little water affects the cucumber plant. Poor water supply dehydrates the cucumber plant and causes it to wilt. Not just that it reduces the inflow of food to the cucumber plant and causes uneven distribution of food which causes deficiency of manure and other form of nutrient you might have applied.

How do I water ensure I don’t under water my cucumber plant?

Set up drip irrigation for your cucumber plant. Target watering the soil instead of focusing on the cucumber plant itself. Your watering should be a few inches close to the root of your cucumber plant instead of the stem and root itself. This will help the cucumber root get stronger and easily transport mineral nutrient. From experience, I will advise you water your cucumber plant 2 to 3 times per day. This will be dependent on your location and other factor like humidity, soil type, rainfall, and soil temperature.

3 Factors that affect Excessive or Poor availability of Water to cucumber plant.

Temperature:

Prevailing temperature of your area can either lead to excessive water or even poor availability of water for the cucumber seed which will completely cause the cucumber leave to turn yellow. Check this out, just as humans drink more water or less water as a result of change in temperature, that’s also what happens to cucumber. A rise in temperature often sees cucumber plants cooling off and letting out water stored in them and accumulating more when there is a drop in temperature.

Soil Type:

The best type of soil for growing cucumber is loamy soil. This kind of soil is believed to be the richest type of soil and yes, it is. Regardless of this, somehow many of them retain water than the other. So, you have got to study the type of soil you have and how it retains water or let it out as it will help you determine how you water your cucumber plant and avoid the cucumber leaves from changing colors.

Soil Humidity:

Humidity is watered or under watered your cucumber plant. It is known that plants lose less water through their leaves. This means if the high humidity, Cucumber plant let out a lot of water via vapor. This happens more during dry periods than during humid periods. So, you are expected to factor this in while growing your cucumber to avoid your cucumber leaves turning into yellow.

3. Poor or Lack of Sun Light

The same way sunlight plays a vital role in crop production from seed germination, to growth, to flowering and even to harvest. That’s how poor supply of it or a total lack of sunlight affects cucumber plants. Without sunlight, photosynthesis will not take place because sunlight just like chlorophyll are important component needed to make the process complete.

Cucumber like other plants loves sunlight and needs about 6 to 14 hours of sunlight each day to grow healthily. Cucumbers are stressed out when they can’t get this level of sunlight. This in turn affects production of food in cucumber plant, causes yellowing of leaves, weaken the cucumber plants ability to fight off disease and bear healthy fruit. Other effect from the lack of light are stunted growth, shrinking of leaves, and production of stunted fruits, leave pigmentation and abortion of flowers.

4. Lack of Nutrient in the Soil

Just like every other plant, cucumber plant needs nutrient to thrive and grow healthy. Most of these nutrients are often available in the soil. However, sometimes they could also be mixing. Here are a few nutrients that cucumber plant needs to grow and thrive: Nitrogen, Magnesium, Potassium, oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon etc.

3 Nutrients your cucumber leaves needs to stop turning yellow.

Nitrogen:

Cucumber plant needs nitrogen to grow. Nitrogen is not just needed but it is one of the very vital nutrients for plant success. They absence of nitrogen is one factor that contributes to the rapid discoloration of the cucumber leaves. Without vital nutrient of nitrogen, cucumber plant will always struggle to produce their own proteins.

Not just that, it absence goes ahead to determine how nutrients and water are captured during photosynthesis. One of the fastest way to check the absence of nitrogen is to watch older leaves of cucumber plant. Best way to supplement nitrogen to your cucumber plant is to apply manure rich in nitrogen like cow or fowl dung or you can try out foliar feed or liquid fertilizer like fish emulsion etc.

Magnesuim:

The absence of magnesium causes cucumber leaves to turn yellow. The lack of it or symptons often starts from older leaves and progresses to new leaves. Magnesium deficiency causes yellowing of older leaves. The symptom begins between the major veins, which retain a narrow green border. A light tan burn will develop in the yellow regions if the deficiency is severe. Fruit yields are reduced.

Potasuim:

Potassium deficiency causes yellowing and scorching of older leaves. These symptoms begin at the margins of the leaf and spread between the veins towards its centre. Large areas of tissue around the major veins remain green until the disorder is well advanced.

5. Plant Disease

Cucumber plants are one plant that can easily get infected by soil and fungal diseases. Many of these diseases mostly affect the root, stem and the leaves. One major symptoms of these disease is yellowing of the cucumber leaves.

3 Plant Disease that causes Cucumber leaves to turn yellow.

Powdery Mildow:

Powdery mildew is one cucumber disease that causes a white powdery growth on the upper surfaces of cucumber leaves and on the stems. Powdery Mildow do not just cause white powdery growth on cucumber leaves it cause stunted growth on affected cucumber plant. Even though fruits are usually not directly affected, the sizes and growth of cucumber plant may be stunted. Powdery mildew is caused by the fungi Podosphaera xanthii and Erysiphe cichoracearum. The best way to avoid it is to grow Powdery mildew-resistant varieties like African Giant Cucumber.

Gummy Stem Blight:

Gummy stem blight is a stem and leaf disease of cucumber, cantaloupe, pumpkin, and watermelon. Its often caused by the fungus Didymella bryoniae. This fungus also causes a fruit rot called black rot. Its symptoms include leaves with yellow to brown or tan spots of various sizes that may eventually cover the entire leaf. The stems may split to form open wounds called cankers.

Anthracnose:

Anthracnose is caused by the fungus Colletotrichum obiculare, and leverages rainy, cool weather to develop. The symptoms of anthracnose are usually spots on the leaves of cucumber plant that begin as yellowish or water-soaked areas. These spots gets bigger, enlarged and turn brown to black. The diseased tissue dries, and the center of the spots fall out, giving a “shot-hole” appearance. Infected fruits have black, circular, sunken cankers of different sizes.

6. Plant Pest

Many plant pest feeds on cucumber plant, leaves and fruit. Many of these pest goes as far a damaging the plant and making you lose the time, cost and money spent in your garden. Besides the yellowing of the cucumber leaves, here are some other effect of these pest on cucumber plant.

3 Plant Pest that attacks or causes Cucumber leaves to turn yellow.

Cucumber Beetle:

Cucumber Beetle is one pest that affects cucumber leaves and plant. It is about 1.3 inch long and has a bright greenish to yellow color with 12 black spots on their wing covers. They often attack squash and cucumber seedlings. The spotted beetles are known to transmit viral diseases and bacterial wilt, which causes plants to wilt, change color and die. If you do not really want to battle with spotted beetle, then you should try growing varieties like ‘African Giant cucumber, which lack the bitter gene and are less attractive to the cucumber beetles.

Spider Mite:

Spider mite uses its piercing mouthparts to suck juices from cucumber plants. When they heavily infest cucumber leaves or plants they become weakened. Spider mites are attracted to drought-stressed plants like cucumber plant when they lack water or are dehydrated. Spider mite always leaves a trial of small yellow or light green dots on cucumber leaves known as stippling. Neem oil is one pesticide to treat spider mite. It always works.

Spider mites thrive under hot, dusty conditions, so keeping your cucumber garden watered helps prevent problems. Spider mites also have numerous natural enemies that are easily wiped out by the use of pesticides. In organic gardens where beneficial insects are encouraged, spider mite problems are rare.

Wireworm:

Wireworm mostly attacks cucumber leaves alot. It also attcks carrots, cucumbers stem/fruit and potatoes. Sometimes, it feast on beets and rutabagas, and the germinating seeds of cucurbits, sweet corn, beans and peas. Wireworm is known to bore holes in attack carrots, cucumbers and potatoes. While potatoes are the most affected crop, wireworm does not spare root vegetable which causes them to be unfit for long-term storage.

CONCLUSION

It is important to state that cucumber leaves do not turn to yellow over night, it happens bit by bit. So, the first step to controlling these problem is by paying attention to your cucumber plant, detecting the cause of the discoloration and then applying remedy the problem using the solutions we have recommended above. I do hope you found this article valuable enough? Join Brilliant Tech Farmers Hub our fastest growing community of farmers.