Plant Shelf

As Fall approaches the weather is finally cooling down just enough for our plants to put on a few more vegetables. But at the same time, the Sun is traveling an ever lower trajectory across the southern sky. This means longer shadows than a few months ago when the Sun was more nearly overhead. These shadows create quite a problem, as part of our growing area is spatially limited and surrounded by a six foot privacy wall.

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Over the last month, the wall's shadow steadily advanced until it had completely engulfed the containers and large portions of the tomato and okra plants located along the southern side of our house. Since we didn't have any other space available for the plants, I decided that I would raise them out of the shade. To accomplish this I built a plant shelf from a few decorative concrete blocks and a two by twelve board. For the time being, the shelf has the plants basking in the Sunlight once again.

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First Fall Tomatoes

Ok, I know we're still facing about a month of 100 degree (38 c) weather here and I'm sort of jumping the gun on the Fall thing. But it has cooled off just a bit, and our oldest Sunmaster plant has started to put on tomatoes. As these are our first tomatoes in quite a while, I am going to consider them the beginning of our Fall crop. Hope there's lots more to come!

Fall Tomato Crop

Just an update on my plans for a Fall tomato harvest. As you may have read on an earlier post, a recent hornworm attack destroyed several of our plants (see: Return of the Hornworm). Our very productive Black Prince and Lemon Boy plants were, unfortunately, among the fatalities. While this ticked me off severely at the time, all is not lost on the tomato-growing front. The two Heatwave and two Sunmaster plants are still growing and doing very well, while the Better Boy limps along in its normal, unproductive manner.

Along with these established plants, I'll soon be transplanting several seedlings in hopes of a Fall crop. For this purpose, I have Black Prince, German Queen, Ace 55, and Lemon Boy plants all starting under the grow lamp. I've grown all of these from seeds, with the exception of the Lemon Boy which is a bit of an experiment. But that's a topic for another day.

Fall tomato plants

Heat and Veggie Production

It looks like the heat is starting to take a heavy toll on my container garden's vegetable production. We've now had many consecutive days in the 105 degree range, and 100 plus degree days will likely be the norm until September. It's getting pretty uncomfortable out there for human and plant alike.

My tomato plants are really showing the heat's impact. I haven't noticed any new tomato production in about a week now. The growth rate of tomatoes already set on the vine seems to have slowed tremendously, with ripening occurring at a much smaller size. The plants themselves are still growing, but the fruit may be finished until cooler weather arrives. My dilemma is whether to try and keep the vines alive until Fall, or pull them and then set out some early producing varieties sometime in late August for an October and November crop.

While I'll try and grow a Fall tomato crop, I've decided against any further attempts at growing beans in this location. Back in late February, I planted several lima bean, green bean, and black-eyed pea plants. All the limas and black-eyed peas died before producing anything. The green bean vines, by contrast, grew like mad until the temperature consistently topped 90. After that they stopped producing any beans, and showed signs of severe stress. I think location played a role in this, as the trellis to which I trained the vines was very close (about an inch away) to a Sun-heated wall. Although I didn't realize this at planting time, this wall gets surprisingly hot during the mid afternoon. This added heat source greatly exacerbates the problem of plant overheating. As a result, the six surviving vines have produced a whopping total of nine bean pods.

Beyond the recent slow down in tomato production and the problems with beans, everything else seems to be handling the heat well. I'll keep you updated on both the tomatoes and these other plants in the coming days.