Hope you all had a great 4th of July weekend. Ours was fine but hot. A window unit is out at the farm and the house was just so warm. In other parts of the country, you might open windows and get a breeze. Not here. It's just a hot, sticky breeze. It's so oppressively hot this time of year.
How hot?
How about feels like (temp plus humidity) temperature of 105 degrees at 6:20PM?!?
People in other parts of the country are surprised when our gardening season ends so soon. But yep, this coming weekend I will have to start pulling up and cleaning out what's faded away in the garden. Tomatoes, cures, etc just don't last in temps that don't even get below 90 at night.
I took some pics after I harvested what I could. Here's what's happening (or not) in the garden:
This is the zucchini bed. Thanks to many of you, I checked and it does look like we may have had the dreaded squash borer make its debut in our garden. Sigh. Lesson learned for next season.
Here are the cucumbers, definitely at the end of their lifespan. There are a few small ones on there I left until next weekend. Should be the last.
They did great though, we just let them spread as far as they wanted and we got cukes by the bucket load (including a few yellow ones we didn't get to after the rains last weekend). We gave away so many to friends and 2nd Family and made quick pickles galore. Never kept them long enough to can some pickles but again, this was a learning process so we can plan for next season.
This is the garlic bed. Epic fail. Not sure what happened. Planted too late? Not enough water? Too much heat? Time to step back and read up on it. Probably a combination of all. But we're nothing if not persistent and we'll try again this Fall.
Tomatoes...sigh. We're going to chalk this up to not being able to tend to them just on the weekends. We think tomatoes are a very hands on crop. The heat has caused its demise now, but we should have had bunches more. Maybe too much water, or not enough? Plus birds got some fruit, others split (a sign of too much water), and we got the dang stinkbugs on them (a big problem in these parts). To top it all off, a caterpillar (or more) stripped off half the leaves. We want to stay organized so we haven't used chemicals but we need to find something for next season.
Sure we got some tomatoes a few each weekend, but not enough to can or put up sauce. We just used them as we got them, pureed into pasta sauce or on burgers and sandwiches. We pulled these and left a few green ones hoping for the last of them when we go out this coming weekend.
The basil however has completely taken over the herb bed. I don't know how we do it but basil loves us. We started calling her Audrey! She's started flowering so I need to cut her back. I just literally ran out of energy in this heat.
We did get a few next to the last veggies from the plants (these are from Friday when we went out before the garden pics were taken Monday). The almost last of the tomatoes, another zucchini and some more cucumbers. Of course there is also the ever present okra and buried under there are some jalapeños. They both LOVE the heat. Oh and we have some eggplant too, they didn't make it into this photo session.
We'll probably get one more harvest by next weekend and then it will time to pull everything up.
We still have a Fall gardening season to look forward to soon!
i have huge tomato plants this year that i started from seed but not many tomatoes...go figure. i got one zucchini and then my plants got mildew. damn! the only thing i am getting so far is peppers. we have had very similar temps to you and i am not happy.
ReplyDeleteyou have aphids on the cuke plant, i believe. spray leaf underside with safer spray.
ReplyDeleteThe caterpillars that stripped your tomato leaves was likely the tomato hornworm. You must pluck that one off and destroy it to help the tomatoes survive. How does your vegetable garden compare to 2nd family?
ReplyDeleteYou've had a bumper harvest non the less. The heat seems to have got to quite a few of your plants but you have done very well.
ReplyDeletexx
I think tomatoes are needy and require some lovin every day or so to thrive. You might want to check out your local garden center for some natural insect repellant for your plants. I have used it and it is not supposed to kill the pests but just make it unpleasant for them to hang around. Unfortunately the bloomin chipmunks are totally unaffected by it.
ReplyDeleteThere is no such thing as a pleasant breeze in this part of the country in the summer. I think you have to completely destroy the plants on which the squash borer have infested. Can they get under the cover and exist in the ground? Tomatoes do require a little vigilance, especially if you have so few plants. I lost nothing when I used the garlic/hot pepper/onion/Dawn/cooking oil spray. Lots of people use shade over plants. Just put up four stakes and put cloth over it. You can ask around for what to use. Umbrellas work, too. well, you did a fantastic job considering you were not on-site so many days.
ReplyDeleteI’m about an hour south of you and my garden looks the same way. When the temperatures hit the 90’s, the garden just turns up its toes and dies. I picked the last of the cucumbers and made my last batch of bread and butter pickles today with these scraps.
ReplyDeleteEven if it’s nearly the last of your garden, your weekend pick looks really nice. And there’s always okra left in the summer garden!
Time to make some more pesto and freeze it! I put mine in ice cube trays. I tried something new over the holiday: pesto on grilled corn on the cob. It was excellent!
ReplyDelete