As you make your seed purchases for the summer garden, remember that the first step in disease prevention is to obtain quality seeds of plants that are naturally resistant to disease.

For example, it is relatively easy to avoid cucumber powdery mildew, a disease that causes cucumber leaves to become covered with an apparent white powder (in fact, spore heads of the fungus that causes the disease) before blackening and dying, thus putting an end to that’s season’s harvest. You just have to pick a variety that is resistant to the disease and grow it under reasonable conditions.

Here is a partial list of cucumber varieties that are resistant to powdery mildew:

1. ‘Adam Gherkin’
2. ‘Alibi’
3. ‘Amiga’
4. ‘Bodega’
5. ‘Brittania’
6. ‘Burpless Hybrid’
7. ‘Carmen’
8. ‘Cobra’
9. ‘Corinto’
10. ‘County Fair’
11. ‘Cross Country’
12. ‘Cutter’
13. ‘Darlington’
14. ‘Diamant’
15. ‘Diomede’
16. ‘Discover’
17. ‘Diva’
18. ‘Eclipse’
19. ‘Eureka’
20. ‘Excelsior’
21. ‘Fancypak’
22. ‘Fanfare’
23. ‘Fountain’
24. ‘Gardon’
25. ‘Gateway Hybrid’
26. ‘General Lee’
27. ‘Gherking’
28. ‘Goliath Hybrid’
29. ‘Harmonie’
30. ‘Homemade Pickles’
31. ‘Intimidator’
32. ‘Jackson Supreme’
33. ‘Katrina’
34. ‘Lisboa’
35. ‘Little Leaf’
36. ‘Manny’
37. ‘Marketmore 76’
38. ‘Marketmore 97’
39. ‘Martini’
40. ‘Max Pick’
41. ‘McPick’
42. ‘MIni Munch’
43. ‘Olympian’
44. ‘Patio Snacker’
45. ‘Pepinex’
46. ‘Perseus’
47. ‘Picklebush’ (‘Pickle Bush’)
48. ‘Regal’
49. ‘Rockingham’
50. ‘Salad Bush’
51. ‘Saladin’
52. ‘Salt and Pepper’
53. ‘Slice Master Hybrid’
54. ‘Slice More’
55. ‘Socrates’
56. ‘Stonewall’
57. ‘Summer Dance’
58. ‘Supremo’
59. ‘SV4719CS’
60. ‘Sweet Slice’
61. ‘Sweet Success’
62. ‘Talladega’
63. ‘Tante Alice’
64. ‘Tasty Green’
65. ‘Tasty Jade’
66. ‘Thunder’
67. ‘Tyria’
68. ‘Unistars’
69. ‘Vertina’
70. ‘Wautoma’
71. ‘Zapata’

As you go through your seed catalogs, whether printed or on-line, look for the letters PM in the plant’s description: they mean the plant resistant to powdery milidew (PM).

Buy Disease-Resistant Starter Plants Too

If you prefer to buy cucumber seedlings in late spring rather than start your own indoors from seed, you should still look for powdery mildew resistant varieties. In fact, it’s almost even more important, because powdery mildew often spreads in commercial greenhouses, meaning the young plants you bring home are already contaminated. If you buy a highly resistant variety, though, the diseases simply won’t develop.

Controlling Powdery Mildew

If powdery mildew does show up on your cucumbers, here are some suggestions to control it: Powdery Mildew on Squash and Cukes.