Last year the only tomatoes that produced through fall were the ones I put a shade cloth over. I planted a total of 24 tomato plants last year. By July they were beginning to look pretty bad. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong but thought to try shading some of them to experiment. The six plants I put shade cloth over returned to healthy vibrant fruit bearing plants and those that were not covered pretty much died. Those that were covered produced well until the first frost. This year I’m covering them all. It was 60% shade cloth. I'm near Aiken, SC to give a perspective on latitude.
Good morning Red, my lettuce bolted and became bitter so I yanked out about ten plants. Last weekend I planted the rest of my raised beds with peas, beans, carrots, beets, celery, cucumbers and melons. Planted late this year, I hope everything does well in the soon to come heat.
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Thanks for the thread RD. Nice looking raised bed you have there. The only tomatoes that really produced anything last year for me also had shade.
May was unusually dry this year, so it looks like we are in for another long hot and dry summer. My tomatoes are doing well. Rest of the garden is doing well. I still have a final planting to do, but may cut that in half due to water concerns.
I only have about 30 gallons of water left in my rain barrels. Usually I have 3 or 4 - 30 gallon containers full going into July. So unless it rains, I will have to haul water if I plant all the beds.
May just throw out some clover seeds to use for soil improvement and forget some of the beds. We will get about 5 gallons a day sometimes 10 gallons from the air conditioner, when we turn it on.
This is the time I really miss lettuce. It has been so nice to just go out and collect enough for a salad each day, but the last lettuce was pulled a couple of weeks back after collecting seeds, which I will plant in the fall.
I have harvested all my garlic, and plan to plant more this fall. We have green onions out the wazoo, but we don’t use that many, so we are discussing whether to try and dehydrate them or not. We still have a lot of dehydrated green onion powder left over from last year.
Have a great weekend everyone. God Bless.
We got a nice rain shower this week here in Central Missouri. Not enough to catch us up, but better than nothing. We’ve had a whopping 1” at my place since the 5th of May.
Nice work!
Thanks so much from CA.
What’s going well: the new vines I planted and my Australian tree ferns.
What’s going poorly: my palm trees, stephanotis, and roses.
Rabbits are burrowing everywhere and stripping many of my plants. They come in from the common area and undeveloped areas near my place.
Finally picking plenty of green beans and pinto beans. We had ANOTHER rain recently & it has all but killed one of 3 tomato plants and several of the bell peppers. The anastazi beans are coming along, but not sure they will do as well as the pintos. Should be picking black-eyed peas in another 7-10 days and they are loaded. My favorite vegetable in the garden. Still getting massive quantities of squash, zucchini, and now cucumbers. I haven’t had a real problem with any pests so far, and I’m convinced it is all the toads in the garden. I know there are at least 4 grown ones and who knows how many babies. Found out they eat squash bugs and that’s just fine by me! There is also a HUGE wolf spider (named him Wolfie) in the cowpeas that I think will earn his keep as well.
I have two tomato plants that I didn’t separate because I wanted to see which would be stronger. Now they both look great and it breaks my heart to snap one off. If I pinch off the suckers, could I keep them both side by side?
Because of this I find your photo deeply fascinating!