New England, July 2015

No the whole plant didn't die. I have about 15 tomato plants & all of them are looking pretty sad. Dropped blossoms, shriveled leaves...I'm hoping the drenching I gave them today along with some extra compost & tomato food will perk them up, but I'm not optimistic at the moment. The ones in pots look much worse than the ones in my boxes.

I hope they perk back up, CAgirl!

CA Girl,  I'm sorry the plants took a beating.  Just water for now and I think some will perk back up.  The summer mantra of water, mulch with a capital M, and shade cloth can help if you have to be away.  Also, consider an automatic drip system for watering that can be hooked up to the hose or existing auto sprinkler system.  If you browse dripworks.com you can see a whole array of possible systems.  There are battery powered  timers, vacuum breakers, pressure reducers, driplines, drippers, stakes, etc.  Sometimes there's no one else to water while you are gone.

CAgirlinMA wrote:Love the looks of your garden CC. Very Impressive.

I came back from a 3 day get away to find my garden looking pathetic  Everything was droopy & looked like it had been neglected for weeks. The worse part is most of the flowers on my tomato plants fell off....I could cry. I watered before I left, but looks like it wasn't enough. I drenched everything today but I don't know if it will make much of a difference.

So what do you all do when you know you're going away? I honestly thought it could go 3 days without water.

what time of day was it that you observed all this droopiness? And did things perk up a bit after watering?  Tomato blooms will abort if the temperature is too hot.

NHGardener wrote:Wow CAgirl, I haven't watered mine in weeks. Altho I go pretty heavy on the mulch and maybe we've even had more moisture here. Could your garden just have gotten too hot? I read somewhere that drooping mid-day on hot days is actually an intentional act by the plant to conserve moisture, something like that.

+1 on mulch & drooping in mid day heat to reduce moisture loss through respiration/transportation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilting

CAgirlinMA wrote:No the whole plant didn't die. I have about 15 tomato plants & all of them are looking pretty sad. Dropped blossoms, shriveled leaves...I'm hoping the drenching I gave them today along with some extra compost & tomato food will perk them up, but I'm not optimistic at the moment. The ones in pots look much worse than the ones in my boxes.

please post a photo.

Hi, sorry to be mia, the three kids have all been home and keeping me busy. Plus we went for a family vacation to Story Land. The garden is coming along, i'm still a couple weeks behind everyone else due to a late start this spring. 
Cucumbers 
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tomatoes, over 4 ft tall

Three sister box
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Nice, Sarah!  You cukes plants are huge! Have you eaten any yet? My plants are about 3 inches hi but have the same little fruits on them.   Weird.

CAgirl, I water twice a week but I don't normally have the hi temps you folks off Cape have.  Besides oodles of pine needle mulch, I'm also experimenting with having plants that shade the base of my toms, like bush beans, greens & squashes.  And one year I had to shade them with burlap. Once it gets over 85 here, they stop producing.  But with shade the blossoms didn't fall off.  Maybe it was a fluke but I'd do it again if I heard the temps would be above 85 for more than a day or 2.

Thanks for the drip link, Sanderson.  I'll be scrutinizing that when I get some time.  I have a feeling this 'new' weather pattern is here to stay.
CC

Beautiful, Sarah!

And I love Story Land.

CC,

I've now had two successive years of cucumber failures.  They grow to about 2" -3", begin to flower and even produce tiny fruits, then the plants wither, dry up, and die.

This year, however, I was able to use some of my own homemade compost to level those squares, and I made sure to plant nothing nearby that would shade them out. Also, the seeds were direct-sown.  I also make sure they get sufficient water. 

So far, so good!  They're the biggest, healthiest cukes I've grown since 2004-2005 in Southern California.

No cukes yet. But look like the end of next week. Limited seed starting space and a surgery got in the way this spring. We have plans for more indoor space next year. 

Nhg, we love story land. We switch off between there and Santa village. But next year we might be going to Disney. My 5 yr old was bummed we had to leave before the race. He kept pointing out any sign that said louden on it. 

I have a couple other squash plants near the house that just started flowering and my beans have finally caught and started growing up the poles. And while I wait I help support the local farmers for goodies.

CAgirlinMA wrote:I came back from a 3 day get away to find my garden looking pathetic  Everything was droopy & looked like it had been neglected for weeks. The worse part is most of the flowers on my tomato plants fell off....I could cry. I watered before I left, but looks like it wasn't enough. I drenched everything today but I don't know if it will make much of a difference.

My tomato blossoms drop off by the hundreds all through June and July and I get very little fruit set until August. I hope you don't lose your growing window, but I doubt three days would do that to you. At any rate, blossom loss isn't too big a deal. I've even had bush tomatoes lose lots of blossoms and come back to produce a good crop.

So what do you all do when you know you're going away? I honestly thought it could go 3 days without water.

I expect losses and try to maintain my equanimity. Losing blossoms doesn't bother me, but actual wilting is a bummer and can be a real setback.

Even though it gets so hot here that it's usually best to water every day, I often skip a day or sometimes two in order to encourage the plants to push their roots deep into the soil rather than content themselves lapping up the water at the top of the soil.

Alternating that with watering deeply so those roots finally find the water they're looking for and keep growing even more, I hope to build deep and wide rooting systems that will survive both heat/dryness and the occasional high wind. It's a risk, but also a preventative measure.

If I then know I'm going to be very busy or not in town for a bit, I water deeply for a day or two to give the plants every opportunity to suck up the water they need and have some in reserve.

I have a friend on Cape Cod that gave up on his cucumbers.  Got the blight of some kind which destroyed his crop.  So far I'm alright.

This potted Spacemaster is the first one with blossoms so far.  Its also the largest.  All my others are smaller and don't have any blossoms.




I harvested 2 Totem tomatoes which I enjoyed hugely at lunch today.  Very sweet and juicy and tasty.  I was pleased.  I can barely wait for more to ripen but so far all the rest are yellow-green or green.
Among my baqged tomatoes from which I hope to save seeds for next year, above is one of the Red Zebras.  Little greenies are growing well inside the bag.

New potatoes for supper. YUM!

Nice taters & maters, Ladies!  Reminds me to pay attention to my quickly wilting tater plants.

Lunch today was SFG cherry mater (#2), onion, garlic, basil & kale on a toasted soy mozzarella cheese sandwich:  

We finally had rain! And it was when it was least expected and not at all forecasted. Ha. Heavy downpour for about 15 minutes. Everything needed it.

For dinner I made baked ziti and added a zucchini, garlic scapes, kale, and a really large walking onion to the sauce. No ripe tomatoes yet tho.

NHGardener.......I wonder if we got that same rainstorm.  It hit my house just before 8 last nite, wind blowing so that I watched the 40-ft trees swaying back and forth.  Then some wind cut a swathe thru my flower garden.  Knocked over a tall indeterminate tomato that was staked, my tallest rose bush, several of the Monarda stalks then three of my potted plants got knocked over, 2 toms and a basil plant.  Very strange.  Just bent things down along that line about 4 feet wide and nothing else.  I got everything back up and tied or fixed as best I could.  The veggies look ok. 
So funny because a potted cucumber, my largest with a cage, was in front of that tall tomato and wasn't touched.
It lasted about 20 minutes coming down in buckets and dropped 1 1/2" of rain in that short time.

Wow QB - 1.5" in 20 minutes! Well, that's one way to get your 1" per week...

quiltbea wrote:NHGardener.......I wonder if we got that same rainstorm.  It hit my house just before 8 last nite, wind blowing so that I watched the 40-ft trees swaying back and forth.  Then some wind cut a swathe thru my flower garden.  Knocked over a tall indeterminate tomato that was staked, my tallest rose bush, several of the Monarda stalks then three of my potted plants got knocked over, 2 toms and a basil plant.  Very strange.  Just bent things down along that line about 4 feet wide and nothing else.  I got everything back up and tied or fixed as best I could.  The veggies look ok. 
So funny because a potted cucumber, my largest with a cage, was in front of that tall tomato and wasn't touched.
It lasted about 20 minutes coming down in buckets and dropped 1 1/2" of rain in that short time.

I wish we would get rain, but not that wind.  That's intense, QB!  Maybe tomorrow night we'll get some rain.  

Pulled and ate the last of my spring lettuce yesterday.   I have new ones planted - romaine & Marvel so far - and could start eating baby romaine now but I'd like them to get bigger.  Maybe a few leaves now mixed in with some onion, kale, collards and tomato #3 will make a nice salad.

I also started some Ripbor kale from seed I picked the other day from last years plants and they sprouted really fast.  I planted those out in the SFG today.

Have a butternut squash problem.  The fruits die and fall off before even blooming.  I'm beginning to think I'm not meant to grow squash...but I WILL PREVAIL!

Started giving away cherry tomatoes and eating pole beans today. I've come to the conclusion that I prefer Blue Lake bush beans to Kentucky wonder pole beans. I like the blue lake better than any of the other bush beans that I've grown or am growing, with the exception of the Landreth which was the last to be planted and hasn't produced yet. I think I'd better put in some more Blue Lake bush today.

NHG, I posted a photo of the little mystery squash under the winter squash thread if you'd like to see a pic of the fruit. Is that what a pumpkin starts out like?

Hard to tell CC! It looks like the coloring but it looks slightly elongated. Can't wait to see it progress! This is a nail biter.

So we got a hail storm in ri last night and it came right through our neighborhood. I lost one tomato and one pepper plant. The corn in the box by it self is knocked over by the three sister box fared better. I have pics but haven't gotten my laptop up to download.

sdugas164 wrote:So we got a hail storm in ri last night and it came right through our neighborhood. I lost one tomato and one pepper plant. The corn in the box by it self is knocked over by the three sister box fared better. I have pics but haven't gotten my laptop up to download.

That's really sad, Sarah. I know the feeling - I had hill for the first time ever last year and it put holes in all my all the leaves of my plants but nothing was damaged as what yours was. Did you get rain? 

Still no rain here. It's like a dust bowl out there. I just spent the whole day watering my gardens in the SFG. I said hose watering the SFG lately because it's just easier to get the water down into the MM with the hose. The plants are not happy about the freezing cold chlorinated water but at least they're happy to have a drink.

Yes NHG, that squash fruit is elongated, even more so than it shows in the photo. A watermelon maybe? do they have long stems like that? Although all the watermelons I buy are seedless...

CapeCoddess wrote:Started giving away cherry tomatoes and eating pole beans today. I've come to the conclusion that I prefer Blue Lake bush beans to Kentucky wonder pole beans. I like the blue lake better than any of the other bush beans that I've grown or am growing, with the exception of the Landreth which was the last to be planted and hasn't produced yet. I think I'd better put in some more Blue Lake bush today.

Have you tried Dragon Tongue beans yet? I tried them after reading all the raves around here, and they really are good.

Hmm. My watermelons have small blossoms and irregularly shaped leaves compared to squashish leaves.

It's SO HARD to tell with vine crops! They all look the same!