Whoa. Stacked cages. I do that because I inherited a bunch. Yes, they need more support. I ended up shoving a T-bar beside each stack and it worked well. Nice thing about doing that is that they're easy to move around between seasons.

Straw can be against tomato stems. It will minimize splash onto plants during rain. If you would have left the greenhouse frame your support issues would be less trouble. I use stringline support for tunnel grown tomatoes be the string can be lowered keeping plants workable. My Sunsugar and Sungold and many other cherry plants are already 10' tall and ready to lower. Jasper, not planted by me this year, was a height record setter that you might want to try... and it is Late Blight resistant. I believe 25' is not asking too much of that variety.

To pick the last tomatoes of the season your greenhouse would again be a valuable asset. Could you relate why you took it down?

Bacterial wilt and powdery mildew of cucurbits are different organisms than the ones that cause diseases by the same name on tomatoes. So no risk of spread to your tomatoes.

Micky Tkac: Should I keep removing the bottom leaves as I harvest the bottom trusses to expose the new trusses or just leave them be?

I prune off the bottom foot or so of leaves and take off any leaves that touch the ground. After that point, I only remove foliage if I see signs of damage or disease on it.

Thank you all for your answers and advice. I took the greenhouse off because I thought the plants got too big for it and that if I top them I wouldn't really have much room for horizontal growth in there and ultimately decrease my yields? This is what it looked like Jun 17 a few days before I took it off.

Regarding the tall one I don't think I will do that again after this year but wanted to do it once to see how tall I can get it, as this is my 3rd year gardening. I think what could have been causing the wilt in the cakes is tonnes of whiteflies and aphids from that red tree from the neighbors yard. I trimmed it back a lot today.

Regardig those cukes I suppose there's no harm in trying to salvage them if they are producing some fruits? I don't know what I was thinking planting the cukes and tomatoes together.. pictures of plant and picture of worst leaf.

Final question does anyone have experience with Safers garden defender for PM on cucurbits? I have a ready to use spray which I haven't used yet as I've been fairly successful without sprays but I feel like I may need to spray these? It has been really dry here no rain for 10 days and no rain in sight but the mildew has been spreading a bit..

<It has been really dry here no rain for 10 days and no rain in sight but the mildew has been spreading a bit..>

PM is spread by the wind so impossible to defend IMO. afaik it is best to spray before the PM comes to you and near impossible once it arrives.

I have no exp with the Safers but since you have it either use it to see for yourself or save it for next year.

I have grown cukes with tomatoes before. To me that looks like cukes beetles, check the underside of the leaves.

the aphids can be basically washed off.. get a 2 gallon sprayer if you don't have one, fill it with water 3/4 of the way, pump it as much as you can and blast the leaves with the water. it can be a little time consuming to go around to each leaf, but the results are MUCH MUCH faster than trying to kill them with insecticides. i did this to around 10 plants early this year and only had to do it once. no more aphids the next day.. the ones that i found were on the ground looking for directions (what a pointless and dumb insect that doesn't even know where it lived)..

personally, i prefer neem oil extract for blight and powdery mildew. it works great as a pesticide as well.. the brand i buy (Bayer) has a unique pleasant smell that i think also helps in keeping other pests away (such as rodents).. just be sure that whatever you use, you apply it after transplanting and every once in a while (3-4 times a month) after that as preventive maintenance.

It's a bit jungly there if you want to keep late blight at bay. 1.5-2 feet is the standard for tomatoes pruned to one stem (1), not 6. Anything more you're inviting fungus. Some cherry tomatoes don't do too hot pruned to one stem though, it's mostly something for the big ones.

Aphid species are often host-specific. Just because your neighbor's tree has aphids doesn't mean those aphids are going to go after your vegetables.

Re: cucurbit powdery mildew--contrary to what one would think, it actually prefers dry weather. Research shows that a good way to knock it back is to actually wash it off with water. As others have pointed out, there's no point in trying to resist taking measures against it. It's ubiquitous and inevitable, basically, unless you're growing resistant varieties.

I've heard that milk works really well to control powdery mildew!

Linda