July 4th, And Too Damn Hot

I woke up at 4 am this morning, fretting about things, and then was unable to get back to sleep.  A mid-week holiday, and temperatures expected to be too hot to even function outside.  At 430 am I gave up on sleep, made coffee, read the news, and waited for the sunrise.

I was outside by 6 am, did a little compulsory weeding in my backyard, then grabbed the camera, refilled my travel coffee mug, and headed over to the Minnetonka garden.  Last evening I had spoken with Frank Calta, and he filled me in on what he had done the last week at the garden.  Tomato plants there are growing by leaps and bounds, and he has been busy pushing the growing ends back into the cages where he could, and tying them with cut pieces of old nylons where that was no longer an option.  The Bed of Bison tomatoes (from Sandhill Preservation) and the bed of Czech Bush planted around Sungold Rugose (which I am hoping will cross) were setting tomatoes and needed to be staked and tied soon.  He had left a plastic bag of already cut pieces of nylon out for me tucked under the handle of his front door which I picked up on my way out there.

Before I did any physical work out in the heat and humidity (which at 7 am was 85 degrees with a dew point over 70) I just wanted to photo document how things were doing there.

The two photos above show Grunt’s Dark Autumn Delight Popcorn, and in the first, where there are C. Maxima German squash growing underneath it, and in the second, there is Mandan Red beans.  The corn is tasseling well, ears are starting to show, the beans are growing vigorously under the corn, supporting themselves with tendrils holding stalks and leaves, and the squash are starting to vine and showing flower buds.

This photo shows the Czech Bush, basically undersown to my 4 best Sungold Rugose tomato plants, prior to my putting stakes next to each plant and tying the main stalks to them.  The plants were showing no signs of even tilting, much less falling over, but just want to make sure, since they are setting fruits, that they do not tip over once the fruits put on full weight.

This is the bed where back in March I planted  Super Canabec tomato plants.  Of those, 4 survived the various frosts and freezes we had.  I replaced the frozen out plants with Bison tomatoes.  Frank had put in stakes but not tied most of them up.  I went through and tied up every plant afterwards.

The long necked, short vined, early season C. Mochata I am working on, and planted back in March as well (under cut milk jugs) is flowering and producing prodigiously.  These two photos are just from one plant, showing the three squashes already set.

The tomatoes set in the photo above are from one of the Super Canabec plants that survived the freezing earlier in the year.  The plant is a bit deformed due to being allowed to lay on the ground for a while before being staked, but the plant is still flowering and setting more tomatoes.

This is a Riesentraube tomato plant.  These set clusters of as many as 100 tomatoes and are fantastically sweet.  Some of our favorite red sauces are made from a mixture of these and Joe Lauerer tomatoes.

The Kellogg’s Breakfast tomatoes are happily growing in this heat.  I am looking forward to seeing how they taste.  Friends of mine speak quite highly of them.

This is a shot of the tree that fell into the northwest corner of the garden, damaging the fence, and, at the time, destroying the bean trellis.

And here is a shot showing the rebuilt trellis and the beans climbing it.  I admit, that tree being gone opens the garden up to about another half hour of sunlight in the evening, so though there was damage I had to repair, the overall result is a positive one and the beans seem none the worse for wear.

Now that I am back home I realize that I missed taking photos of the Mandan Black Beans I planted along the fences.  They are starting to twine the fences and all look good.  I could have had better shots of the German Squash, but they do all look good.  Jimmy Nardellow peppers are just starting to flower, Joe Lauerer tomatoes are starting to set fruit, the Cherokee Purple tomatoes have fruits set that exceed a pound but are dead green, and there is nothing there that I would say is doing poorly.  The plants do not seem stressed yet by the heat, and this garden had nearly an inch of rain early yesterday morning.  Heat is supposed to break tomorrow night and at least for a while daytime highs should be in the high 80s instead of low 100s.  Hoping for lower humidity this weekend so I can get some serious time in at the Ness farm.