60 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1891. 



the season is not sufficiently advanced to permit them to be 

 opened, at least a part of the day, for bees to enter, and particu- 

 larly if too early in the season for bees to be flying, the fertiliza- 

 tion or mixing of the pollen must be done by hand, else yon can 

 have no fruit. 



But cucumbers grown in frames where it is so difficult to intro- 

 duce the bee while the frames are closed, are not often planted 

 early enougli to require hand fertilization, as this would be slow 

 work, although it can be done and often has been done. 



Watering. 



The cucumber, as well as lettuce, requires a great quantity of 

 water, especially when fruiting and particularly after the weather 

 gets warm enough to keep your house or frames open nearly all 

 the time. A thorough watering every alternate day is then 

 required to keep the plants thrifty and prolific. 



My house having a slope of one foot in sixteen, I have for sev- 

 eral years irrigated instead of taking the time of one man half 

 of each alternate day to water the plants. This I do by letting 

 the water run through the hose on to the bed at the upper end of 

 the house, and follow a slight depression or channel in the 

 soil along the roots until it reaches the lower end, changing once 

 in several hours to other grooves on each bed until all parts have 

 been sufficiently moistened. 



We practice the same method also with the cucumbers in the 

 outside hot-bed frames, which are also on sloping ground. 



Diseases and Pests. 



The cucumber does not seem to be so susceptible to diseases as 

 lettuce, and in this respect is very much less difficult to grow. 



Last summer, however, nearly all cucumber vines in this local- 

 ity and particularly those in open culture, later in the season, 

 seemed to be affected with some disease that nearly ruined them. 

 Perhaps this was in part due to insect pests, for there are of late 

 getting to be several destructive insect pests besides the old 

 striped cucumber bug and the large black squash bug. 



Last summer the cucumber vines in my green-house, when fully 

 grown and yielding their best fruitage, became suddenly and 



