PNW July 2014

Went out today and the heat had withered the leaves on a number of them. Like the real wither, dead kinda wither. All it took was one evening followed by one morning (I got to them by midday), and this one day wasn't one of our hottest ... I think about 100 even. Hope they recover.

I did notice that the soil drank the water at a very quick rate today. I can't recall ever seeing water disappear into it so quickly there. It didn't linger at the soil surface at all, just disappeared. I wonder if invading roots from a tree (we do tend to have lots of those in those beds) or other nearby tomato plants had something to do with that. Or was it especially windy? Or did some new, hidden mole/gopher tunnels appear, maybe?

I sure hope it's not disease, but it seems unlikely, as just yesterday they looked fine.

Surprisingly my patty pan squash seem to love this extreme heat. They aren't growing by leaps and bounds, but seem to be doing better in the 100-108 range than they did in the 80-99 range, where they completely stalled for a while. They often look wilted before watering, but spring right back.

I still have lots of watering to do every day, a good two hours' worth minimum, but I'm so glad my major projects for the year are done.

Thanks, me too! It wasn't all of them that got hit, thankfully. I just hope it's not disease. Aside from patty pan squash, beans are the only thing I've grown in that garden this summer that hasn't done horribly, much worse than last year.

Something very scary happened starting yesterday too -- cucumber beetles appeared up at the little growing space I have back at home. And they're eating my bean leaves. I hope they don't spread bacterial wilt to them. They destroyed many many cucumber plants there last year, and I'd hate to see them do the same again this year, PLUS kill my beans. *sigh*

Hope that wilt in the other garden was just heat, wind, and sun wilt, not beetle-induced bacterial wilt.