Friday, July 6, 2012

Early Summer Heat Wave

We are in the middle of an 11 day heat wave, Sunday is expected to reach 101F. There has been very little rain as well, so I've been trying to pay close attention to water needs in the garden.


The tomatoes, peppers and watermelon are loving the heat. I definitely think the plastic and salt hay mulches are helping to keep the ground moist. Below are the Black Krim tomatoes:


Peppers:


I'm still trying to figure out how to tell if the watermelon is ready to pick. I've read that when you tap a ripe fruit it will have more of a solid "thump" sound vs. the hollow sound when you tap an under-ripe fruit. They all sound the same to me right now so I'm waiting to pick the big one.




Squash are also doing well. No sign of Squash vine borers yet... but I fear its only a matter of time. I've been spraying the vine a few inches above ground level with insecticidal soap every 7 days.


So far I've only found squash bugs on the pumpkins. I've been picking off bugs and eggs for weeks now. All of the bugs seem to prefer the pumpkins and so far no fruit has set. If I get no pumpkins this year they will at least have been an effective trap crop.

The runner beans are growing slowly, but the kidney beans already have bean growing on the plants:



I was worried about the eggplants. They had tons of flowers, but the flowers were dropping and not producing fruit. Eggplants require 2" of water a week vs. the 1" that tomatoes require. I increased the how much water they were getting and now there are lots of little baby fruits on all of the plants!






One of my garden neighbors had a bird build it's nest in their plot. This week the baby birds hatched. I saw the mama bird (robin) feeding them yesterday!










9 comments:

  1. Your garden is beautiful! We are commercial watermelon SEED growers...lots and lots of acres. Look at the area of your melon where the stem is, you will see a curleeque on the stem where it's connected to the melon...when that is dry your melon is ripe.

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    1. Thank you so much Lynda! The curleeque was dried up so I picked it and it was ripe!

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  2. This heat wave is absolutely ridiculous! I have to say that your garden is looking great! My runner beans have been a bit slow too. It must be the weather. I have one winter squash at the plots that's all wilted. I inspected it last night and didn't find any SVB damage. Who knows, maybe it's the heat!

    Stay cool.....there's just a couple more days of this heat left!

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    1. I could only go in the early morning it was too much for me! I lost the pumpkin plant yesterday...not sure if it was the bugs or the heat. Oh well, I'll just plant more beans!

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  3. Your garden looks wonderful! So lush and green and producing so well! I'm not having any luck with mellons this year, will have to try next year.

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    1. Thanks Jenny, I think the black plastic mulch is the trick. They love the heat!

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  4. Your garden is great! I am so jealous of your tomatoes. Mine are a complete flop this year but I will try again next year!

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    1. Thanks! It helps to use soaker hoses and mulch of some kind. I also put lots of stuff in the planting hole at planting time: egg shells, bone meal, slow release organic fertilizer, crushed aspirin.

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  5. Nice garden. I also plan to try growing some watermelons and it looks like the black plastic is working well eh.

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