There we go! Glass half full, right? Thanks for your response...

Yeah I didn't have any downy mildew last year, which was my first year gardening. Therefore I never sprayed a preventative on the curcubits.

I'm only about a mile south of Lake Ontario, about an hour and a half east of Niagara Falls. Up this far north I have found out we usually don't get it. However, with the early high humidity this year combined with all of the warm fronts blowing in from the south I guess it was a perfect storm so to speak.

Only issues I had last year were a lack of sunlight and powdery mildew on the summer squash which never did any real damage.

I'm trying to grow as organically as possible, so I don't spray insecticides or fungicides. But I'm willing to make an exception this year if there is something out there that works as an eradicant rather than a preventative solution.

I REALLY don't want to lose the crops, but I do understand that mother nature rules above all else.

You must not be very far from here, and we've had awful weather this growing season... more than 8" of rain in June. I lost half my tomato seedlings before I could get them in the ground -- and naturally it's the first year I didn't grow lots of extra plants! :( My cukes are growing better than ever, however, so go figure.

Read this and you should feel better: dealing with downy mildew

If it were me, I'd trim away the BAD leaves and just try to keep water off the leaves in general. I'd allow the leaves w/ minimal damage to stay because they're still feeding the plant and shading the fruit as they are now. The DM won't survive our winters, so even if you keep the plants and they fail miserably, at least you don't have to worry about any residual holding over until next year. All you risk is your watermelons -- but you're at risk as long as the wet weather continues.

Good luck! I lost all my beautiful cukes to bacterial wilt last year, so know the pain.

PS: I try to stay organic too. One of the nicest homemade organic fungicides is cinnamon spray... man that smells good. lol!

What general area are you in? I'm in Clarkson/Hamlin area just north of Brockport.

Well I've already harvested 15-20 cukes, and I've been cutting off any leaves with lesions. The new growth looks good though.

On the flip side, I just found out that there's a late blight outbreak now too...So maybe I can spray the tomatoes as a preventative.

I went through and clipped nearly half of the leaves on the tomatoes for air circulation since I have everything trellised.

If you're close enough and my tomatoes keep kicking butt, I'd definitely be up for trading for some cukes!

I'm growing vf100 super sweet cherries, and a couple burpee varieties... Supersteak and Early Treat.

If you're interested let me know!

Sorry, I was thinking you were east of Rochester, but your location is actually more than 2 hours west of me. :p

Hello, I've been doing a lot of research recently on DM and although I have it on Basil there are some similarities between our DM. The two biggest factors are Humidity and Leaf Wetness. I know it's though because you're growing outdoors but if your garden in small enough fans to increase air flow may help in both cases. Other than that you can remove infected plant material (no more than 1/3 of the plant) and spray a fungicide on the them. We are using Oxidate 2.0 followed by Actinovate the following day. They are a bit pricey but a 3% hydrogen peroxide spray in the morning may be worth a shot if you're looking to save some money. Good luck!