More Drought and Heat Wave!

With no rain and temperatures above 100 degrees all week, it is surprising that the perennial and annual flowers are still doing well.

It is NOT surprising however, that the vegetable garden looks pretty stressed. I just can't keep it watered enough. When the plants were young, I successfully used drip jugs next to each plant but I can't use them anymore now that the summer season veggies are so big.

How are other gardeners doing in the watering department? Do you water daily, use soaker hoses, drip irrigation or some other method? Maybe you don't have the drought problem at all. I know our friends in England has had the opposite problem of late.

Anyway, what follows are some painful pictures of the stress that most of my plants are in. These will not win me any "gardener of the year" awards, that for sure.

A new problem that I am having that I don't remember from years past is that tomato branches are splitting or buckling under their own weight. I assume this is due to lack of water inside the branch. Here's one I noticed as I was watering:

Here's my daughter surveying the stress in the vegetable garden:

Not everything is doing poorly. I don't mean for this to be a depressing post so I will end it on a good note. After all of the watering was done last night (I watered again this morning), I ate a late supper consisting of a Brandywine BLT and some fresh Bread & Butter pickles!

After I ate, my daughters and I made some more pickles with cucumbers we had just picked. Here is a picture of the sliced Brandywine, along with those cucumbers:

And since I've already put too many pictures on this post and since I have begun to ramble, I will post one last proud picture of my first heirloom Brandwine tomato!

Gina from My Skinny Garden wrote a great post about tomatoes being the most photographed of all vegetables. She pondered if we have reached our quota on tomato posts. She is right that we garden bloggers are crazy about our tomato photos. They are like pictures of our children and grand children. So just like you do with kid pictures, look at the blogger's tomato pictures and politely say "Oh wow, how nice."

I just hope it rains soon so I have more tomato photos to show!

Comments

[August 09, 2007 at 10:05 PM]

I feel for you with the lack of water. Here in Florida, it's feast or famine. We go from drought and half the state burning down to waiting for the lizards to pair up and get on the ark. It now rains almost daily. That being said, temps here are easily in the 100's, so it's mostly steaming my plants.

I guess it saves time in the kitchen! LOL. Keep posting those LOVELY mater pics!

Emma

[TracyAugust 09, 2007 at 10:17 PM]

Marc: This year Minnesota is in an extreme drought. I've been watering my veggies every 4-5 days for 3 hours at a time. So far, it's working okay, although the cucumbers and zucchini are starting to look a little ragged, and the beans have definitely seen better days. On a high note, though, the tomatoes seems to like the watering regime, because they're starting to come in really nicely.

I hope some of us get some rain soon.

[August 10, 2007 at 12:40 AM]

Marc... I've been watering the vegetable garden deeply once a week all summer, and it is raised beds like yours. I, too, have noticed that the tomato vines can't seem to support the weight of the tomatoes like they should.

And, with these hotter days, plus the fact that we are on the downhill side of summer, I think the garden will finish up sooner than usual. Some plants are quite wilted at the end of the day, but they perk right up by morning.

Carol at May Dreams Gardens

[August 10, 2007 at 03:42 AM]

hey marc! that Brandywine looks so delicious! I'm gonna try to find some of those seeds next year after seeing so many posts with the beautiful Brandywines.

As far as watering, it's been raining all week here. It's feast or famine it seems.

[August 10, 2007 at 10:34 AM]

We're suffering here with the heat and no rain too, I just did a long post on my blog about my watering techniques. I'd rather have rain.

[August 11, 2007 at 12:34 PM]

Hey Marc,
I'm sorry to hear about the drought season some of you are experiencing. Hope you'll get some rain soon! On the other hand, lately we've been having a lot of it, maybe even too much. That's gardening!
Stay green!