While many of you out there are living up the tomatoes and and buckets full of zucchini, around here it's getting a little too hot. Today was 106 degrees with winds around 10 mph. The rest of the week should be the same. These kinds of conditions are not conducive to happy vegetable plants.It's more like raw cooking weather!
The tomatoes are no longer fruiting, the zucchini have twisted blossoms which don't allow them to open, the chard is constantly going flat and the poor peppers wilt every day. I am watering deeply every morning to help them out and sometimes giving them a drink midday to help keep off stress. As you can see I've resorted to covering the whole lot with 50% shade covering. I know it looks a bit ram-shakle and it is. As a renter I'm not going to build any frames to hold the shades up. However, I did buy a bunch of plant supports and cording. Today was the second day of this covering and the plants are doing better. Every season I learn more and more about desert gardening and this summer it's shade covers. If we ever buy a house here in Tucson I will be sure to build shade covers over my raised beds before I plant anything. Of course with a roll down westside cover to help with afternoon sun.
I hope your gardens are doing better!
**Also you still have two more days to enter the Cubits seed pack giveaway. If you haven't checked it out yet please do!
So do you have to wait until oct-nov before everything perks up again?
ReplyDeleteAtleast September. But then we can grow all the way through December.
Deleteit's so interesting to me to see the different growing climates through everyone's blogs :) most of my garden is in containers on my driveway, which easily reaches into the hundreds on hot days. hearing about your stressed plants makes me think perhaps putting them on top of some sort of reflector might help some of them out during the high temp days. in my garden i just noticed my lemon balm came down with a bad case of powdery mildew while we were away for the weekend. really hoping it doesn't attack my squashes!
ReplyDeleteYikes! I hope so too. I had something attack my tomato plants a while back. They are still holding on but they have lots of dry leaves. Of course there are no tomatoes!
DeleteSame boat over here...I've moved most of my pots into shadier spots throughout the yard, but they still need a very deep watering each morning and often times still look a bit wilty by the end of the day. Gardening here is such a challenge!
ReplyDeleteMy mint is on the porch in a pot and it's doing fantastic! I wish everything could be under the porch.
DeleteIt is really cool to see the difference from one place to another in terms of gardening. I use to live in the high desert of California, and I remember the growing season being spring and autumn mainly. It will be great to see when your growing season comes back again.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to the real arrival of the monsoons. That will bring us back down to the high 90's and hopefully that will allow the garden to take off again.
DeleteWhat a bummer. You should think about putting in a drip system since you own the house and won't move out for a while.
ReplyDelete