Good morning, Gardeners! Who’s ready for Fall? You know, Fall...Autumn...that very pleasant period of time between Summer and Winter? You know, Fall? Nice, crisp, almost cold mornings...mid 60s in the afternoon...need to dig out my long sleeved stuff...college football. Roll Tide! You know, Fall! Autumn...the graceful fade of Summer, with the scent of Winter in the air…?
As I may have mentioned in the past, I’m a Weather Channel junkie. So...it still being hurricane season, I’m kinda thinking that the name “Fall” should be retired, not because of it’s terrible devastation, but because of it’s absence...I’m just not sure that we should have a formal name for a season that has decided not to show up. “Spring” is in jeopardy of being retired, also... Things are messed up, Folks. In the Southern Tier of the country, especially in the Southeast, we still have 4 seasons, I guess...”Pretty Much Summer”...”Full-on- Blast Furnace Summer”...”Not-quite-Summer”, and “Almost-kinda-sorta Winter”.
This is the 10-day forecast leading into this 1st weekend of October...
Granted, MahDalGal, Jayden, and map, among others, have had it hotter, but I’ll tell y’all... the Summer of 2019 has whupped my almost 60 year old butt….
Okay, I’ll get down off of my soapbox… Temps are forecast to come down a good bit next week, but the long range outlook still looks to be above normal. We’ll see...
Let’s get to some gardening, shall we? (Spoiler alert: I’m coming off my 3rd straight week of 55+ hour work weeks, so I’ve really not had the time to take pictures…)
2019 was my worst tomato year in recent memory. The overnight temps were really the determining factor. For about 2 weeks in mid-July, the overnight lows didn’t drop below 75. Several nights didn’t make it below 80….and, as I’ve mentioned before, tomato plants do not like these conditions. Even my mighty Big Beef plants just shut down...they produced well up to about mid July, but then: basically nada. I did have a couple of bright spots...I started a project to “dehybridize” the Chef’s Choice Pink. I saved seed from 2018 to see how it turned out.
The (potato) leaf shape looks almost identical. The fruit looks almost identical, also...
Both tasted very good...very similar. However, the F2 version seems to be not resistant to the effects of rootknot nematodes…several other varieties, also... Some “autopsy” pics...
This is what non-nematode infected roots look like...
I’m researching some more anti-nematode strategies… I’ll let y’all know.
I technically have one tomato plant still growing, a volunteer “mystery mater” that popped up in another pot back in May.
It appears to be a potato leaf variety of some sort. It’s now in a bigger pot on the back porch and about 4 ft tall, but has not bloomed yet.
Tomorrow, I’ll be making hot sauce from my (still) fermenting Hinkelhatz peppers.
I’ll try to post some pics of that process next week.
Well, that about wraps it up from downheah. Looks like another 95 deg scorcher today, but a front moves through tomorrow night and cools things down a bit, with some rain in the forecast. I’ll gladly take it!
What’s going on in your gardens? Anybody having an actual “Fall” season?