Many a new growers venture into cucurbits, such as squash and cucumbers, and get one of the biggest surprises! Unlike pretty much all other seedlings, these plants rapidly increase in size and stature. When these plants are started too early, they are exceptionally challenging to take care of and will, quite literally, take over.
Hopefully you’ve heeded sensible seed sowing schedules that had you sowing these plants a maximum of five weeks to last frost. Even at that, they can still be a bit challenging to take care of!
You’ve probably observed that there’s a direct relationship between a plant’s size and the amount of water that plant drinks. Well, that’s definitely true for cucurbits and then some, they are thirsty bois! It’s important to semi-frequently check the water levels for these plants as they can exhaust the supply quite quickly. One day you’ll be fine, the next morning they’ll be gasping for water!
While these vining plants can be a bit challenging in the indoor grow room, we’ve found it best to keep them all in the same tray and just allow them to fight among one another for dominance. It’s not a good idea to combine them with other plants as their giant leaves can quickly snuff out pretty much any lesser plant.
The other challenging thing about cucurbits is that they are extremely frost sensitive. They cannot be planted out until we’re well clear of any frosts. Even the slightest frost can spell complete disaster for these plants! We generally wait for overnight lows of 40F (or above) for squash and 50F (or above) for our cucumbers. So, guard them carefully!
Like peppers and tomatoes, squash and cukes are some of the very last that we plant in a given season. This is one of the reasons we direct sow these large plants into larger 3.5″ pots, just to give us a bit of flexibility. Even then, the larger they grow, the more vigilant we have to be with their watering needs.
Hopefully yours are behaving for you, but we figured this would be right about the time where you might be going, “Uhhh, when does this end? Please and thank you!”
