Put up the last of the pepper cages & spun polyester covers today in the home gardens. I bury 3 sides of the cover, so digging the trenches in this heat is slow work, and done under cover of a passing cloud. The 4th side (downwind) is for access, and is held down with a couple long pieces of 1/2" rebar rod laid horizontally & pressed flat. The cages keep out pollinators. Before closing the cover any peppers or open flowers are removed, so any blossoms set after that will be pure seed. There are 5 pepper varieties in those gardens being grown for seed.
The covers will be closed for 2-3 weeks, at which point any peppers which have set are tagged for seed saving, and the 4th side pinned open. Leaving the plants covered longer than that is risky. While the covers prevent insects from entering, there are always some aphids already present; protected from predators, they can multiply rapidly enough to damage the plants. Once the cages are re-opened, though, wasps & ladybugs quickly move in to feed, and the aphids are mostly gone within a week or two with no action on my part.
I found a source for good hay, and purchased 20 bales. DW & I finished mulching the home gardens, everything except okra & Moringa (which grow better in bare soil). It's amazing how quickly most plants perk up after mulching & a good spraying to rinse off the mud splash. The Emerite pole beans & German Butterbean limas virtually leaped to the top of their trellises, and have begun blooming. The bitter melon, which had been yellowed & sickly, turned green almost overnight & has started to climb and branch out.
We don't mulch the Tromboncino squash either, since mulch would provide cover for cucumber beetles & squash bugs... a lesson learned the hard way in years past. I patrol the squash plants twice daily with spray bottle in hand, to catch the first squash bugs before they lay eggs, and keep the cucumber beetles manageable. Only a couple squash bugs so far, but the beetles are fairly bad this year, and are damaging some of the vine tips. Killed a couple SVB moths flying nearby, plenty of those around this year (some hatched from last year's garden)... but no sign of eggs on the Tromboncino.
We've been upper 80's - low 90's continuously for the last week, and mostly dry. That trend will continue unbroken until next weekend, when we cool down a little. On the plus side, all of the heat lovers (okra, water spinach, limas, cowpeas) are growing furiously, and the plants in the rural garden are making up some of the time lost to a late start - especially the sweet corn. The runner beans, though, have basically stopped growing, waiting for the heat to break. The high heat & humidity also limit how much time DW & I can spend in the gardens, so we are struggling to get caught up in the rural garden. All things considered though, after two straight years of record rainfall, I welcome the opportunity to have a normal garden & get caught up on some of my seed grow outs.
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it's been eating a lot of the tulip bulbs too (and other garden plants).
This has been the longest dry spell here in the last 3 years! Most of the storms have either gone around us, or faded away before reaching us - which is actually a normal summer for this location. Unbroken heat, little to no rainfall - its like a SoCal summer so far. No complaints from me, since that allows me to control water - and both garden locations are on a well.
