Covering Up The Maters Tonite, Gonna Be Cold!

[jdmidwest]

What a change in the weather, gonna drop to 56 degrees tonight. That is half of the high last Friday.

This hot weather has done a number on the ole garden. Spring squash are gone. Green beans have been frying in the sun. Tomato vines look sad and quit blooming a few weeks back when the heat started. Cucumber vines are the same.

Good news is the fall squash and radish look good. Fall cucumbers are coming along, they may make a few before frost. Tomatoes should start blooming again with the cooler weather as well as the beans. Having a hard time getting the lettuce to come up, I think the seed was roasting in the dirt.

How is everyone else coming along??

[Chief Grey Bear]

Late season melons are looking great. But I ain't tucking my maters in.

[jdmidwest]

Just kidding on tucking them in, my vines are about 8' tall. I have a hard time reaching the top of them.

Bees are working good this morning in the cooler temps.

[Quillback]

I have a few mater plants left and some cantalope is still coming in. Other than that things are done.

[ness]

YEah -- this season started out soooo good, but the heat and drought were too much for my beans and some of my maters. We were out of town for a week, and the hired help didn't keep things watered enough so I pulled a bunch out yesterday. I'm getting things ready for fall now -- starting some lettuce indoors, cleaning up the beds, amending the soil. Hoping the recent cool nights will turn things back on. Haven't had a mater in two weeks.

[jdmidwest]

I watered all summer and have a nice bill to show for it. I have several big tomatoes but the possums are working them over. I have trapped 3 of them so far.

We were out of town last weekend and the garden did not get water for 3 days and it was hot. I lost my cucumbers, squash, and a few tomatoes in the main garden.

My okra is still knee high and has not bloomed. I don't know what has went wrong with it, it did the same thing last year.

Fall squash and beans are coming along. I still get a few cucs off some vines shaded by the house. My patio tomatoes are just now putting on. They were some little frostbite plants that have struggled all summer. Peppers have not produced.

I hope we get some rain this week, it has been a few weeks since we have had a drop. The yard greened up for a little while, now it is back to crunchy brown stuff.

[ness]

I tried a new hybrid banana pepper -- Sweet Spot 3XR -- against my old standby Sweet Banana. It has produced very nice, thick-walled, straight peppers to about 10 inches since mid-July. Sweet Bananas, Anaheims and Poblanos have been a bust. I reassessed the cukes today, and they just need to come out. Added all the 2-year old compost to the beds today. Gonna start some carrots, bush beans and beets outside tomorrow night.

[jdmidwest]

I have not eat a beet since I was a kid. Never acquired a taste for them. I did eat the pickled eggs that mom used to put in the beet pickle juice.

[ness]

I like them pickled -- that's about it.

[Wayne SW/MO]

My okra is still knee high and has not bloomed. I don't know what has went wrong with it, it did the same thing last year.

That would worry me, I didn't think anything stopped it from growing. It is a bona-fide weed. The old Clemson Spineless was unstoppable, or so it seemed.

The older variety of tomatoes wouldn't bloom when the nights stayed hot, can't remember what the threshold was, but it wasn't unusual for them to quit and then rebound in late summer. I don't grow enough now to speak about all the new varieties.