Topping Cukes?

On a lark I put in some cucumbers near my tomatoes. They're currently strangling everything within comprehensible thought, and I'm concerned about the face-sized leaves robbing sun from the tomatoes.

Do we top these at some point? I have them caged as I thought vertical growth should be encouraged, but I see no end to these vines in sight, short of wrapped around my ankles in my sleep.

Thanks in advance for the help. Pointing and laughing at my idiocy is encouraged, as I really have no idea what I'm doing with this and have learned to enjoy being roundly mocked and ridiculed as result.

You must take control. Keep the vines confined to the area you want them to be and cut the rest ruthlessly every day (they grow that quickly). They will take over if you let them. I had a cuke vine pull down a tomato plant once. Since then, I'm quick with the blade.

I am trying to grow my cukes up a bean teepee, although they do seem to prefer the tomatoes...

I grow min on strings that I tie off to a cross beam on one side of my square foot garden. I keep adding strings to let the various vines grow. When I have max strings, I cut everything else dows as it grows.

Ours are growing up some dried bamboo stakes. The little wraparound stranglers love to hold onto these and I haven't had a problem with them grabbing other plants yet, and they are probably almost 6 feet tall, and very close to our other plants. I have found that you can "train" the stranglers around the bamboo stake, and it will go from there. I am not sure if you can do it at this point in the game, but I bought the bamboo at Gethsemane for a few cents per yard.
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Thanks for the thoughts. I went Edward Scissorhands on my unruliest vines this morning. I'm also hoping this will encourage the plants to concentrate on bearing fruit more than growing vines deadset on world domination.

Tzatziki for everyone!

DeathByOrca wrote:Thanks for the thoughts. I went Edward Scissorhands on my unruliest vines this morning. I'm also hoping this will encourage the plants to concentrate on bearing fruit more than growing vines deadset on world domination.

Tzatziki for everyone!

Be ever vigilant. Those vines will be back in a couple of days.

If you're feeding them anything containing nitrogen: STOP !!, since that engorges their monster growth, not to mention killer instinct.

Topping them off *should* encourage lateral growth, and maybe some flowering. If you're watering them, cut down by half and see what happens--it does them good to be a little thirsty. Makes them think about survival of the species, and so on.

Geo