garden pics...(tough year so far)

I decided to post a few SFG pics...with the 110 heat indexes, disease, pests, etc. the SFG seems to be going downhill on a daily basis.  Not sure if I should rip everything out and re-seed veggies like cukes...or pick what I can and get ready for the fall garden.  Any thoughts?  Spring harvest was great with excellent sugar peas, beets, carrots, onions, lettuce, etc.

below is a typical older cucumber leaf...maybe a mixture of disease, nutrient deficiency, spider mites, etc.


below are cuke plants that looked half-way decent have just started looking like this in the last day or so.


below are green bean leaves sucked dry by mites...i have entire 4x4 beds that look like this.


below is a typical pickling cuke...poor pollination.  english and beit alpha types doing a  bit better.  plenty of honey and bumble bees around.


below are 2 month old cuke plants...not even two grids up on a cattle panel trellis.


below is a typical cherry tomato plant...of the three plants in the ground for two months I've probably picked 5 cherry tomatoes. 


below may be a bright spot...I had some leftover plants and my neighbor let me plant her old garden plot right next to our driveway...plants here look much better...much less sun but at least protected from the brutal heat.  Tomatoes and eggplants look 10x better than the SFG with plenty of blossoms, fruit set, virtually no disease or pests, etc.  On the drive edge is a trombone squash...grows about 1' per day and teh first squash just apeared.



I'll be headed to the community garden tomorrow to check peppers and green beans in additional SFG beds, hopefully pick some tomatoes and peppers (hybrid peppers not blocky and thick-walled like they should be and like I grew last year...thin walled and contorted so far this year), add another line to my Florida weave, etc.  Hopefully more pics later.

I don't know what's going on with the cukes in the first and second photos and you didn't say how old they were but looking at that made me think 'tired'.  Do you have some compost you can side dress them with? If not  try something like  Espoma fertilizer and see if they improve, if they don't I would pull them up and start over. In the meantime start some new ones elsewhere. Your squash along the driveway looks fabulous. Mine looks like this everyday:

...and my three month old pepper plants are still about 4 inches high. As you know, it's different every year, landarch, and we learn something new all the time. Don't give up.
CC

landarch wrote:I decided to post a few SFG pics...with the 110 heat indexes, disease, pests, etc. the SFG seems to be going downhill on a daily basis.  Not sure if I should rip everything out and re-seed veggies like cukes...or pick what I can and get ready for the fall garden.  Any thoughts?  Spring harvest was great with excellent sugar peas, beets, carrots, onions, lettuce, etc.

below is a typical older cucumber leaf...maybe a mixture of disease, nutrient deficiency, spider mites, etc.


below are cuke plants that looked half-way decent have just started looking like this in the last day or so.


below are green bean leaves sucked dry by mites...i have entire 4x4 beds that look like this.


below is a typical pickling cuke...poor pollination.  english and beit alpha types doing a  bit better.  plenty of honey and bumble bees around.


below are 2 month old cuke plants...not even two grids up on a cattle panel trellis.


below is a typical cherry tomato plant...of the three plants in the ground for two months I've probably picked 5 cherry tomatoes. 


below may be a bright spot...I had some leftover plants and my neighbor let me plant her old garden plot right next to our driveway...plants here look much better...much less sun but at least protected from the brutal heat.  Tomatoes and eggplants look 10x better than the SFG with plenty of blossoms, fruit set, virtually no disease or pests, etc.  On the drive edge is a trombone squash...grows about 1' per day and teh first squash just apeared.



I'll be headed to the community garden tomorrow to check peppers and green beans in additional SFG beds, hopefully pick some tomatoes and peppers (hybrid peppers not blocky and thick-walled like they should be and like I grew last year...thin walled and contorted so far this year), add another line to my Florida weave, etc.  Hopefully more pics later.

Hi Landarch. I live near the St Louis, MO area and I think the heat has had a LOT to do with it. I have two 4x4's and four, 4x8's and in late march, with the help of hoop houses, everything was going gangbusters.  Then, it started going down hill a little each day. The cool weather crops did really good before it got so hot.

My tomato plants started turning brown from the ground up. My cukes looked worse than yours and I had to take my pole beans out.

The only thing I have left that's still doing good is my carrots, beets and peppers.
I think a lot of it was my fault because I only used one kind of compost. Now I know better and I'm going to amend all of my beds before I plant my fall garden.

I love the summertime but I'm almost longing for the fall to hurry up. 

Cape, cukes are about 2 months old.  Ready to pic 5-6 nice ones for pasta salad this evening.  I do have some new compost ready to go...and I'll also be prepping some squares for fall crops.  I have fertilized with coop-poop (well balanced organic fertilizer).  When I pulled one of the smaller plants up there was hardly any root system.  Maybe I'll clear some squares along the trellis this evening, work in some more compost, and get some new seed started.

I did pick a large crate of tomatoes this morning...roma-types are doing the best.  About have the others that are ripening have either been sunburned or eaten away by a nasty, gray blister beetle about an inch long.

I also picked about 2 gallon of some really nice green beans.

It's supposed to rain early next week with some warmer temp...heat advisory continues until then.

Mr., I hear you...very hot and muggy lately.  It was also a relatively dry and warm winter...lots of pests love that.  Beets, carrots, lettuce, and sugar peas have been my best crops so far this year.