QUESTION: For years, I have grown County Fair cucumbers with great success. They have always been tender and delicious, never bitter ... until this year. The first few weeks of harvest, they tasted great. Now, they are so bitter, I have to peel away every bit of skin, or they are inedible. What happened?ANSWER: Apparently the environmental stresses were just right to create the bitter taste in your cucumbers. These conditions include reduced moisture, heat or poor nutrition. Any of these factors must be in play because County Fair is one of the cucumber varieties rated most likely to resist turning bitter.Since you sound like a careful and successful gardener who pays attention to watering, I suggest the shift in temperature from the mild days of late spring into early summer to high heat of the past month may be the cause of the problem.Do your cucumber plants have a layer of mulch to keep the soil temperature cool? Are you watering thoroughly so that the plants get at least an inch of water that penetrates the soil deeply?Both of these things should help return your County Fairs to a taste you enjoy as the summer goes on.

QUESTION: I have a rose bush that I planted several months ago. I bought it as just the root ball with minimum amount of soil around it and the stems at the top of the root ball had been cut off. After planting the rose everything was green for awhile. One of the trimmed stems started a shoot and it has leaves on it, but suddenly all the stems started turning black. I'm afraid the whole thing will die, but none of my roses has acted like this before. What would turn stems that had been green for months suddenly black? Can I save this rose?ANSWER: It remains to be seen whether this rose will survive.It is likely to have a problem called canker. A range of disease organisms cause this problem, which shows up as you describe in blackened stems. You must cut these stems back to healthy green tissue now and give the plant time to grow out. Your rose will require TLC with good watering and rose fertilizer while attempting this comeback.