Transcript
Jessica : Hello, hello. how are you?
Plant People: I know. I was like, what i' I'm doing good. Today is the Jessica and Ray show. And we did not have a Lexus sliding in at 150 miles per hour.
Jessica : a horticulture agent day.
Plant People: Yeah. So it's a, yeah, it's, it's, and we can talk about whatever we want to talk about Jessica.
Jessica : Right? Just whatever you want.
Plant People: Yeah. And that, that's a good thing. But, uh, yeah, we are two of four. Normally, uh, those of you guys that have listened before, there's, uh, more of us on here, but Brett and Alexis could not be with us.
Plant People: They may, I think Jessica, they said something about they'll be recording an episode for next week, but this week is just us.
Jessica : Yeah, it is crazy time of year, which is like, it's kind of odd because some people are like, wow, you're through your super busy season, right?
Plant People: It is.
Jessica : Because people think like the spring rush. But especially as Ray and I being agents in counties, um this is now switched into like fair mode.
Plant People: no
Plant People: County based. Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica : So we have like county, you just finished with county fair.
Plant People: Well, it's, yes. ah yes
Jessica : I'm geared up for county fair. And it's like a whole other busy season, right?
Plant People: But it is.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: It's a different kind of busy. And, you know, all the stuff that we were helping people plant and manage in the spring, that stuff's producing now. And it's getting diseases or it's drying out or it's doing all the things.
Jessica : I was going say, or sick.
Plant People: So not only do, you know, are we working in the field and doing a lot of diagnostic work, but as Jessica just said, we're, you know, out here worrying about county fairs.
Plant People: And I think you're working state fair again this year, Jessica. Is that right?
Jessica : Yeah. So yeah, our county fair happens at the end of July and then kind of there's like a week or so break and then we roll right into state fair.
Plant People: So, yeah.
Jessica : So, but I, I'm one of those weird people.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : I'm a weird agent. I will admit it. I enjoy county fair, but I'm, I do floral hall and it's not just all plants.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : There's a lot of other things in there too, but I really enjoy seeing how excited everybody gets when they see their items and it's fun.
Plant People: Yeah, I have always enjoyed that, especially like the youth and adults. I mean, adults get excited about entries. We have, you know, and county fairs, youth and adult entries. But yeah, I enjoy county fair also.
Plant People: And, you know we have a you know wonderful flower show and we always have you know, lots of entries on fruits and veggies and things, not so much, uh, on certain items because we're kind of an early fair.
Plant People: I'd say you got a leg up on us there, Jessica, where your fair is a couple of weeks after hours and that, hours that takes place.
Jessica : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: But, um, yeah, I always enjoy it. And is your floral hall air conditioned?
Jessica : It is. I'm really spoiled with that, that it's air conditioned.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : that makes it much, and much nicer experience for everyone involved from judges to participants to us who spend hours and hours there.
Plant People: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica : um but it went kind of like a little update on, i don't know, I think I talked about before a long time ago, our play garden that we planted in our backyard this year, different from our production garden.
Plant People: Yeah.
Plant People: Oh yeah.
Jessica : And it kind of ties into the fair. Um, where we just have a few things in there that we don't grow in our main big garden that my kids have been loving this summer, like and growing onions, growing potatoes, uh, digging potatoes is like their new favorite thing.
Jessica : And they're like wanting to ask all the neighbors if they need help digging potatoes because they are all about it. but, But we kind of talked about some of those things that we might still have going. We might still have some green beans when the fair comes around.
Jessica : We definitely have lots of sunflowers planted, but my kids wanting to enter those in the fair, right?
Plant People: Yeah. Oh yeah.
Jessica : They've never really entered like veggies before, but now they might actually have a few veggies to...
Plant People: Oh, that's fun.
Plant People: That they grew in their own garden space.
Jessica : Yeah, yeah.
Plant People: Did that change when, I know they've been around from day one on your all's farm. They've been around growing things and and farming and all the things, you know, that go along with that.
Plant People: But when they got their own garden space, did that sort of change? Like, did they take ownership of that like right away or is it their space and they remind you of that?
Jessica : Yes.
Plant People: Yeah, good.
Jessica : Yeah, they did. ah Because, you know, the other garden is more of a larger production garden, right? That one, that one is going, stuff's going to market, you know, with that one.
Plant People: yeah
Jessica : And this one was fun because my kids love onions. They eat raw onions. Our onions never the biggest one we had maybe been the size of a baseball because they just got excited and could go out there and they pull them early.
Plant People: Oh yeah.
Jessica : And that was fine because it's just their, their play garden.
Plant People: when It's their garden.
Jessica : And
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : And that's even my son said that, which is a great quote to me was that ah something had happened. We planted sweet potatoes out there and like two of them kind of got fried.
Jessica : Right. And they didn't do do anything. But he was just like, it's OK, mom. It's just a play garden. And I'm just like, you're right. It's just if we get stuff, we get stuff. If we don't, you know, it's not the end of the world. But in our tiny little space, we have gotten a lot of potatoes and green beans so far.
Plant People: I was going to say, it sounds like you've done, how long, how did they want to get out there and just dig the potatoes when they were tiny, like little tiny or did they, did they, were they able to wait?
Jessica : and onions.
Jessica : They didn't, that'll probably be a problem next year because where this was their first year, they didn't really know, right
Plant People: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now they're going to be out there checking every week.
Jessica : So we did it.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : Yeah. But then like once the first one, we dug that one up, they wanted to dig them up every day. And so we kind of had to stagger them.
Plant People: oh yeah. Yeah.
Jessica : And a neighbor asked us, how are you storing your potatoes? And we didn't do that many, but if we already have plans to do double, you know, next year. And i was like, well, we're not storing those because we eat them every time we don't have any leftovers.
Jessica : Cause we've, we've been eating them instantly. um
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : but we've been green beans on the other hand, um
Plant People: that
Plant People: I was going to, I was going to say with you, with you guys, you guys, where you guys, you know, grow commercially and you grow personally.
Jessica : Right,
Plant People: i don't know about you, but folks locally here, they're like, Oh, when we have garden stuff, we really have garden stuff. And we've talked about that on the podcast before it's boom and bust.
Plant People: And right now it's kind of booming.
Jessica : right.
Plant People: ah it seems like all the things are coming in green beans to, you know, tomatoes, if everything went well. But i mean, what do you do with all this stuff? I know you guys personally consume a lot, you just said.
Jessica : right right
Plant People: But how do you take care of all that? do you guys like preserve a lot or can a lot?
Jessica : Yeah, especially yeah we have a lot of blackberries that are coming in right now.
Plant People: Oh, man.
Jessica : So my kids are just stained purple all the time. um But like making jams and stuff out of those, water bathing, those are easy.
Plant People: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jessica : ah Green beans, I tried something.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : It's not something new. i'm sure lots of people do it. But for us, I don't have a pressure canner at home or a way to really pressure can on my stove that I have. So we ended up picking a bunch of green beans, which has also been a fun experience of breaking green beans.
Jessica : ah They had never.
Plant People: Oh, they oo you grew green beans with strings.
Jessica : yeah oh no, no strings. So, yeah, just breaking them.
Plant People: Oh, no strings just breaking. Okay. in My mind immediately when you said breaking green beans, I went back to, you know, ye olden days when we actually had beans.
Jessica : Yeah. Right.
Plant People: We sit there and string them and then break them.
Jessica : Right.
Plant People: So, okay, stringless. Okay.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: That's not so bad.
Jessica : So they just had fun breaking them, right? And we froze them. So blanched them and put them in freezer bags and froze them and we'll see how they turn out if it's the same as ah when my mom used to can like 200, you know, cans of green beans each year.
Plant People: Yeah.
Plant People: Oh yeah.
Jessica : so
Plant People: Yeah, mom used to, you know, my family, we used to can a great deal as well, but ah we don't. We don't now. It seems like we freeze stuff. Like we'll cut up peppers and, you know, we'll set them out after they're washed like bell peppers and things. And it takes up a lot of freezer space to freeze them in a single layer. And then we put them in the bag so they maintain shape. You know, we we freeze as much as we can, but we certainly don't, ah I guess, can a lot. and We don't have a pressure canner now. In fact, that's ah I'll have to admit that.
Plant People: But we have been making a lot of like garden, what I call goulash. It's just like squash and tomatoes.
Jessica : Yum. Right.
Plant People: I'll stick it in the biggest pan I've got and just let it reduce. Just cook it over medium heat, reduce it.
Jessica : right
Plant People: And then we'll throw that on pasta. And I throw a little brown sugar in there just to, you know, um blend it all together. But we eat a lot of garden goulash. It seems like if there's just random stuff sitting on the counter, we'll make that the kind of a pasta sauce kind of concoction.
Plant People: Just random.
Jessica : Okay. Nothing wrong with that. i think we've had squash and onions almost every night as a side dish.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
Jessica : um It has a good chunk of butter in it.
Plant People: Yes, butter.
Jessica : um Butter and, you know, char charm a little bit and you can't eat that.
Plant People: ah Butter will flavor everything together, yeah.
Plant People: Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: Roast them. We eat a lot of roasted vegetables and things like that. But we get creative. We make friends with the neighbors. We are in a subdivision. ah So not all of our neighbors have tomato plants.
Plant People: We give out tomato plants. Reed does in the spring. Usually we'll regrow some transplants. But we're able to we're pretty lucky that we can give away some tomatoes. But yeah.
Jessica : Nice.
Plant People: It seems like when we have tomatoes, a lot of other people have tomatoes too, depending on where they live. So at some point, there's just lots of tomatoes everywhere if things if things are going well.
Jessica : Yeah. Yeah. rear on the verge of that. I feel like, like that, you know, our tomatoes are all just, so they're starting to get in that breaker stage.
Plant People: Yeah, yeah.
Jessica : Right.
Plant People: Just getting a little color, just a little color, yum.
Jessica : So that's like with little color on them. So it's getting ready to be that time where, um, sandwiches,
Plant People: And I've learned, and this is a, yeah oh gosh, yeah, i don't even get me started. And that's how I size my tomatoes. are Like what size of tomatoes do you grow? Or what type do you grow? I'm like any kind of beefsteak, not the beefsteak variety referring, just the beefsteak style to anything that will cover a bologna sandwich.
Plant People: That's my, or a hamburger. That's how I size my tomatoes as strictly just on size. I want one big slice. I don't want to fool with two slices. I want one big slice.
Jessica : Right, yeah.
Plant People: I love it. Yeah. But, uh, uh, yeah, tomatoes are are doing pretty good right now. Um, but they're just one of the crops that's, that's coming in. So all this stuff is rolling.
Plant People: It's rolling.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: Um,
Jessica : And even, i mean, it's doing fairly well, surprisingly, with even all of our, like we went from, at least in my area, we got close to like six inches of rain in like a 24 hour period.
Plant People: yeah, yeah.
Jessica : um So a lot of rain to extreme heat like the next day.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
Jessica : So so it's been, um you know, it's been tough on tough on some of our vegetables out there in our gardens.
Plant People: Yeah.
Plant People: He,
Plant People: it has, and and he does, can do strange things. Now ah we talked just a little bit earlier, you know, and all this kind of depends on varieties and your sun exposure, whether you get morning sun, evening sun, or both, preferably with the garden, you have full sun, but, There's been a heat dome, I guess, that Jessica, that's what they're calling it the last few years. It seems to be a popular term, but we're under a heat dome where it's been nighttime temperatures, which is very important. Nighttime temperatures have been elevated along with daytime temperatures, and by daytime temperatures being elevated, I mean...
Plant People: 90 plus degrees. And in the the evenings or through the nighttime, that's 70, 75 degrees or greater.
Jessica : hu
Plant People: So when you have those conditions, you can have um issues in your home garden. And i've I've been getting some of those phone calls and ah and it's related to that.
Plant People: It seems like I'll pick on tomatoes for a minute. They're one of my favorite crops, but boy,
Jessica : They're very dramatic.
Plant People: They are, tomatoes are kind of princesses in the garden a little bit. They're kind of prima donnas in that they are wonderful.
Jessica : I guess an indicator plant, right? Like...
Plant People: They are because there's so many conditions that can be related to high temperatures from blossom end rot, which is not directly caused by high temperatures, but it certainly plays a factor.
Plant People: what Yellow shoulders, uneven ripening, or my favorite, Jessica, I believe you and I, or maybe someone else, I forget who i was talking to the other day about, maybe we were texting a group, but tomatoes not ripening.
Jessica : Right.
Plant People: I've had several questions over the last two weeks. with tomatoes just holding green for longer.
Jessica : right
Plant People: And that's a condition in it that's related to heat.
Jessica : ah The leaf roll, right? That their leaves start to roll Yeah.
Plant People: Physiological lethal, yeah.
Jessica : And that's all heat related that they start doing that. And often has people really worried that it's a disease or herbicide damage that's occurred, but they just, they do that when they're hot.
Jessica : It's very common to see in high tunnels and greenhouse production.
Plant People: Yeah, we see that in high tunnels all the time with that. But, you know, the plants will otherwise look very clean top to bottom. But you, and you know, look healthy, good green color, but you'll see the leaves, you know, cupping or rolling.
Jessica : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: And a lot of times that's just temperature related. but But tomatoes do a lot of interesting things when the temperatures get really warm. really out of hand and kind of ah high temperatures, especially 90 degrees plus.
Plant People: But it does some in some cases cause uneven ripening. Commercially, you it's called yellow shoulders where the lycopene in the plant doesn't form what? I forget, above 85, 90 degrees.
Plant People: ah Your tomatoes just don't turn red.
Jessica : Yep.
Plant People: That's one of the things that we've been seeing some of. And also here lately, we have some home gardeners that like to sucker their plants. And I caution people not to aggressively sucker their plants too much because your plants need to have adequate leaf cover to shade the fruit.
Plant People: And those home gardeners that maybe suckered their plants a little too aggressively, they didn't have good leaf cover. So have you seen any sun scald much this year?
Jessica : I've seen some swan skull. You bring that up. It's blackberry season right now as well. And with this last round of that heat dome that we had, there was a lot of blackberries. I've noticed that I've had some sun damage to the fruit where they were.
Jessica : I mean, they'll still be great for, you know, those cobblers and jams and jellies and everything.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : They just don't look as pretty. But it's that sun exposure and that, you know, intensity that caused them to
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : to burn a little bit. But I've seen it a few times on some tomatoes too. And especially those ones that were pruned a little too hard.
Plant People: yeah
Jessica : Like there's good intentions of, I think people think they're going to avoid some foliar diseases, maybe that way, lots of good air movement, but ah just, you know, just pruning at that very beginning is is really all you need, right?
Plant People: Yeah. I usually prune just to yeah, I usually just prune a couple levels up.
Jessica : Cause you, that leaf coverage is beneficial.
Plant People: You know, I'll prune a couple times, you know, week and half, two weeks apart or whatever, and then I'll stop.
Jessica : Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Plant People: I don't want to prune too high on the plant. But sun scald on crops like tomatoes and other crops like berries, some of that can also be related to the plant wilting during the day. If it's not getting adequate moisture, if a plant like a tomato plant wilts during the day, that automatically exposes the fruit, right?
Plant People: to more sun and that can cause rapid sun scald. So we've just been seeing some of that, uh, that's related kind of to that, but, but I've had it on blackberries, all kinds of berries before, especially those Southern facing slopes.
Plant People: And depending on that's a cultivar difference too, if it doesn't have adequate leaf cover, you'll see more of that seems like on berries on those Southern slopes.
Jessica : I've, I've seen a lot of wilt that has occurred. But again, we had a lot of rain and then all of a sudden it got super hot.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
Jessica : um So a lot of plants that were just kind of like wilting after, you know, and I think, you know, a good amount of them have like regulated themselves out, but um you know, making sure when people do water, uh to help combat that like watering deeply you know we always talk we've talked a but lot of times on here about mulching and how beneficial mulch is um but we put ah some straw down on our play garden mostly because i was trying to fight the weeds also in it but we did a nice layer of mulch and i think that ah of straw and that has really helped um
Plant People: Yeah.
Plant People: Malt really helps. Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : regulate, you know, keep those, that soil moisture um and prevent some of that wilting and some of those other things that can go along when they have these extreme heat swings.
Plant People: Yeah, you'll have on certain varieties of tomato shoulder cracking, you know, that that happens on melons and vine crops and crops like tomatoes if the water's uneven.
Jessica : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: you have blossom end rot. We've touched bases on on that on several times on the show, but ah uneven calcium dispersal in the plant or the calcium is moving too fast through the leaves if it's really hot and the plant's trying to cool itself by letting moisture out.
Plant People: It's just ah that a complex situation, but it's made much worse by high temperatures and uneven watering. But it has made such a huge difference um ah mulching my, especially my raised ah beds and my container plants where I have tomatoes.
Plant People: last couple of years I started mulching those. And it reduces the need to, I mean, I still have to water just about every day when the tomatoes are producing in a container. They really pull a lot of water out of the container.
Plant People: That's fine. But it's cooled the soil and it has helped, it ah that has helped even out the moisture. And my tomatoes have just been much better in containers the last couple of years.
Plant People: And it's all because I think mulching has cooled the soil and just evened out that moisture that you just talked about.
Jessica : right.
Plant People: And that's helped a bunch. And that works, of course, in ground too. It's kind of the same effect. So that's a big one, but the heat affects more crops than just tomatoes, other crops too.
Jessica : Yeah, i i we were talking but a little bit before, and this keeps popping up in my mind, about cucurbits, right? And how they can get real funky with the heat.
Plant People: Oh yeah. Yeah.
Jessica : and what cues Yeah, so ah you were sharing that, ah you know, they end up, one, they just don't produce fruit at at some point, but they also get off balance with male and female flowers, right?
Plant People: It hits them too.
Plant People: Yeah. Yeah.
Plant People: e
Jessica : And it's a ratio of, is it more male flowers, I think, that come on?
Plant People: I forget how it goes if it's more males needed for female or vice versa but what I do remember is that a high heat really messes with the production of that ratio of male to female flowers so that's a problem but not only that but if it gets hot enough sterility of the pollen itself is an issue in a lot of different crops ah you know tomatoes You know, I've seen it in corn.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: And someone reminded me, it was an entomologist the other day, they also said, oh yeah, by the way, yeah, we know in corn you may have uneven pollination that's result you know as a result of temperature, and so you have kernels that don't fill out on the cob.
Plant People: But they said, bees also, I guess you could shed some light on this and it gets super hot. that there's a point to where bees don't even pollinate as of as so efficiently as that yet.
Jessica : Right.
Plant People: And that kind of hit me because I never thought about that in respect to the temperature in home gardens.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: They said, no, when it gets so hot, bees don't like it either. i was like, oh.
Jessica : Exactly. so it's kind of funny. Like, it's like, if you're hot, they're hot too, right?
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : Like once it gets to a certain temperature, they, you know, exerting all that energy flying around in those temperatures.
Plant People: I'd never thought about the bee angle. Mm-hmm.
Jessica : And if they don't have a good, you know, bees and stuff, drink more water than we, I think people, you know, think about it, they don't have a great water source nearby or something. They're not going to exert all that energy going to those flowers. They're going to stay back at that hive. And we see them where they're bearding the hives to try to cool it down the best that they can. Yeah.
Jessica : yeah So they reach a point. And I also tell that to people a lot of times too, when we use, you just mentioned all those crops that just kind of stop producing at a certain temperature. and it's like, Hey, you it's hot and miserable for us outside.
Jessica : It's also hot and miserable for the plants, you know, as well.
Plant People: And ah yeah, and and pollination, I mean, so important.
Jessica : ah
Plant People: And I guess, you know, I hadn't thought just as much about that because I always talk about, you know, pollen going sterile or bloom abortion. There's lots of crops like, you know, that we just just talked about, like pumpkins and things that if it gets real hot, the blooms will just fall off.
Plant People: But it's also about the bees.
Jessica : Great, yeah.
Plant People: Yeah. So it's a combination of a lot of different things.
Jessica : We also have currently um where a pumpkin was thrown out in the yard. We have a pumpkin coming up like in the center of our yard that we have now chosen to just mow around.
Plant People: Mm hmm.
Jessica : And it has started putting flowers up, but I'm pretty sure they are like all male because nothing else has happened yet. But it just, yeah, but it's just started, you know, when it's been really, really hot.
Plant People: You don't see any little tiny things? Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica : So, um but yeah, just a a rogue pumpkin in the dead center of the yard that we are choosing to mow go around now.
Plant People: yeah if If you see a lot of blooms, but yet no little swellings of the little little beginnings of the tiny fruit at the base of that bloom, ah you know you that you may be having some issues.
Jessica : Yep.
Jessica : Right. But it's also cool to like, if you pay attention to it, to see like when you're brain watching the weather and stuff and see when those temperatures change, how you'll, you'll start to notice things of like, you'll see that fruit development then.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : So it's, it's neat to like, you know, observe that as well happening.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah. Most most garden crops, it's, you know, the good news is we're talking about all these heat related issues from, you know, green beans, which you talked a little bit about earlier, squash and zucchini, cucumbers, all these things with, you know, pollination or bloom abortion.
Plant People: But the good news is that when the temperatures do cool down, most garden crops are pretty resilient.
Jessica : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: They will recover as long as they've been getting adequate moisture. When the temperatures in the evening especially start to drop, you'll see recovery. Now, i do warn people that if you see your garden crops going into the evening, you know, a lot of crops, that you'll see some wilt during the day when it gets really hot.
Plant People: That's sort of normal as long as everything else is looking good. But if you go out in your garden the next morning and things are still wilted, you have to really start to consider watering. And I don't know about you, Jessica, but especially home gardeners, commercial you know farms, of course, have their own water schedules. But for home gardeners, I really want them to take a hard look at watering. And the best time to do that, if it was a perfect scenario, is do that in the morning. If you see that you have a lot of wilt, do that in the morning. ah And that'll prepare that plant as well as possible to go through the heat of the day.
Jessica : Right. Morning time. And i know this one is always like try to water at the base if you can, because that's going to, you know, always say like, you know, you can't avoid it when it rains.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : Right. But just, you know, water at the base is going to help you in a long time, especially I think of tomatoes with like all those foliar diseases that we get that are often spread by moisture and water, you know, movement.
Jessica : Um, that's going to help you go a long way that way and make sure to water deeply. Right. So if you're just doing a little spritz, um, across the top of it, it might, the top, you know, layer of the soil might look like it's saturated, but if you actually dig down there, it might not have any, you know, that water hasn't got to those roots at all.
Jessica : And if you're watering deeply, you end up having, um,
Plant People: yeah
Jessica : stronger roots, I guess you want to say, right? Like they're going to seek out that water versus if you're watering just very shallow, they're not going to put on as, you know, deeper root system on there.
Plant People: Yeah, um I'm trying to think. i It's almost like a confessional as we're talking here, kind of crops that I'm personally like in my own little backyard garden, which does not get full sun exposure. It gets probably 60% of the sunlight that it needs. So usually ah sun scald and things like that aren't a problem for me, but problems that I'm having right now, I guess I'm thinking, Jessica, in my own little play garden. It's not a commercial patch at all, but just for a home garden, home planting. is I've got lots of blooms on my squash. It's actually, usually I'm covered up by squash this time of year, zucchini.
Plant People: ah Usually just covered up, but we've really got a tremendous amount of blooms, not very many zucchinis. So I'm not just, you know, that's not a problem i'm having right now. Typically it is, and I think that is temperature related.
Plant People: It's an heirloom variety, so I think it's more prone to that. And I kind of knew that, but I wanted to grow it because it was slightly more resistant to squash vine borer. Slightly, not totally resistant, so I wanted to try that out.
Plant People: And it's not done great. My cucumbers, I have had some vine wilting. I've not been watering those as well as I should. And I've exposed some of those cucumbers to hot sun, and I'm getting those off flavors in cucumbers.
Plant People: You'll notice in certain crops like a cucumber, I think that that's some of the bitterness. You know, we talked a lot about like what causes bitterness.
Jessica : Right. Yeah. Right.
Plant People: That's happening. only that, but misshapen fruit. And cucumbers, you know, sometimes you'll just get misshapen fruit. Like tomatoes, you'll have white core hard flecks within the flesh when they start to ripen.
Plant People: Well, cucumbers, they'll get misshapen. So I'm seeing... all of that right now on certain of my plants, but the bitterness also is somewhat related to temperature fluctuations and hot temperatures.
Plant People: You had anybody, you know, that's asking about any of that.
Jessica : like I can say that, like, but personally with some of the cucumbers that we've been harvesting as well, that we were excited to try and then we ate them and I was like, oh i I don't know about this.
Plant People: Yeah. yeah
Jessica : um And they've been a little more bitter than I would hope that they would be.
Plant People: yeah
Jessica : um I know with our little garden, well, we've also planted two little blueberries plants and they've been watered the whole time, but they are not happy.
Plant People: Mm-hmm.
Jessica : So they are just, they they're riding the struggle bus this summer. And we're just like, I think, you know, containers for those guys, maybe next year if they survive.
Plant People: Yeah, maybe easier to modify the pH or just manage them.
Jessica : Right.
Plant People: But big containers for blueberries, and that's peat-based, which is kind of is easier to acidify, it seems like.
Jessica : Right.
Jessica : Right.
Plant People: But yeah, that those guys. In central Kentucky, blueberries just struggle. ah We're blessed with limestone-based soils, but not for blueberries.
Jessica : Not for blueberries.
Plant People: That's not not good for blueberries.
Jessica : They're not happy. No matter.
Plant People: And if you acidify, you've got to go back and re-acidify the next year in most cases because that soil is always being buffered above where...
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: ah blueberries like. So yeah, my own home garden, I've got some of these issues and, and it's just what we see from time to time in Kentucky. And a lot of these varieties do help.
Plant People: Like I said, I choose varieties now, unless i have a specific purpose. I choose varieties with good leaf cover. That's really important for berries. It's important for crops like tomatoes. Pruning makes a difference. ah
Jessica : We talked about green beans, how there's a difference of like, so the bush, the other varieties, the bush beans, bean o being able to provide more of that foliage coverage and, you know.
Plant People: the Yeah. Varieties make a difference.
Plant People: Yeah, a couple of years ago, all of my green bean blossoms, and I don't see it a lot, but I do see it. Green beans, technically on paper, are more susceptible to really high temperatures than even vining crops. And I have had years where I'll have people call in and I can trace trace it back to heat waves or heat domes that we've had to here in Kentucky.
Plant People: or wherever you're at if you're having high temperatures beautiful vines and i'll ask well i'll ask about their fertilizer and we'll determine that they did not have excess nitrogen and you know a lot of times i'll track that back to um just high temperatures and the blooms went sterile or blooms just drop i went out and looked and blooms just fell off i don't see that a lot some of the newer hybrids just and i were talking earlier um I think they're better about that.
Jessica : Right.
Plant People: They shade themselves better, but there's just certain varieties that are more prone to that. So watch out for that. If you have beautiful vines and have blooms that are falling off, it could be related to this these hot temperatures as well.
Jessica : Something that, at least in our garden, is not quite ready yet, but it's approaching. And temperature temperature and rains can really affect affect them are the watermelons and cantaloupes.
Plant People: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica : It will either it'll either greatly work in your benefit, right, ah if it's dry and a hot um to sweeten them, helping them ripen, right?
Jessica : Almost perfect.
Plant People: Oh yeah.
Jessica : so You got to beat it before, you know, because the raccoons, groundhogs, surprisingly um deer and coyotes, coyotes will even eat like cantaloupes, get them, you know, the day before they're ready.
Plant People: Oh yeah.
Jessica : But the temperature, that's like one crop I feel like when you're ready for them to ripen, that's one it's like, all right, it's okay that it's really hot and dry, you know,
Plant People: I feel like have more control with those crops. Are you now the ones you're talking about, Jessica, irrigated or non-irrigated?
Jessica : Yes, they're irrigated.
Plant People: If they're irrigated in horticulture, we're a little bit different breed in that commercially, if it's a dry season, we usually have irrigation of some sort. And that means fewer diseases and you have more control over your water schedule so that you don't have blowouts, cracking or You can concentrate the flavors in some cases by underwatering just a tad and kind of managing that.
Jessica : Right.
Plant People: But when you have natural boom and bust cycles of rain, it sort of just blows all that out of the water, doesn't it?
Jessica : right Yeah, it literally literally blows them up.
Plant People: And then you really start looking at tomatoes and vine. Yeah, literally blows them out and you start. There's nothing worse than seeing the cracking or ah with cantaloupes. We've had some years where it's so hot, they you kind of cut them off.
Plant People: It's almost like they sour on the inside.
Jessica : Right, yeah.
Plant People: ah Yeah, you'll get that.
Jessica : They it become like too sweet, like if that's a thing.
Plant People: Yeah, they get so hot and you cut them open.
Jessica : Yeah. yeah
Plant People: I don't know if it's fermentation or what the exact effect of that is. But yeah, the heat does strange things there. so But normally that's not a problem. if you That gives you more control and you don't have to worry about diseases as much late season.
Jessica : Right. Right. So that's like one benefit of it, right? For those crops, at least.
Plant People: Yeah, for those crops, because you the they're irrigated any which way.
Jessica : But yeah. Yeah.
Plant People: And so it kind of works in your favor. So it's not always a bad thing ah commercially. ah But now I know for other field crops that are typically non-irrigated field corn, soybeans, things like that, you just don't generally have that option here in Kentucky.
Plant People: You don't have a lot of irrigation options. Yeah.
Jessica : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: for the most part. So that's a very bad thing. But on the horticulture side, not as much impacted by that, even though you do have to water more and that's going you know, create a certain cost.
Plant People: But I would rather have that than just, you know, be at the mercy completely of the natural rain cycles, which seems to be getting more sporadic. I don't know if it's just me, but heavy rains and then it turns off hot and then it may not rain again for a while.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: That's tough. That's tough on our garden crops. It is very tough.
Jessica : For sure.
Plant People: But Jessica and I were going to mention like fall garden crops, but I think gardeners will come after us, Jessica. They will be upset. We're here telling them, oh, it's 100 degrees. Plant your fall crops.
Jessica : It's, yeah.
Plant People: Get ready to plant those.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: I feel like a gardener may throw ripe tomato at me or something if I tell them to plant something now.
Jessica : it's It's weird. it's Yeah, it's weird because like our potatoes in our little play garden are done, right? like We have like one more left to pull, but now we'll have a spot available right to plant something else in.
Jessica : And so i was looking at one of our our ID 128, our home vegetable guardian guide, and has a nice little chart in there to see what we could, we can plant.
Plant People: Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : And it's kind of weird, like already thinking about that, but it's so true. Like July is the month that if you want to get stuff in for the fall and reality, um that's the time, time to do it.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : yeah.
Plant People: And you just have to pay more attention to the watering. A lot of times it is hot. um It's hotter, so you do have to manage the moisture of newly planted, you know, transplants.
Plant People: But there's just some crops, I was trying to think, Jessica, that are so much better. Even with some light frost, they actually... improve. Those fall crops are so much sweeter.
Jessica : It's, yeah, it's like broccoli.
Plant People: i was thinking kale, Brussels sprouts, parsnips, carrots are amazing in the fall, but there's just some crops that are better.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: But it's always been a hard sell for me telling people during July and August when a lot of these things go on the ground, it seems like if it's been a hot year, especially gardeners like, no, don't talk to us about that.
Plant People: We're done. But commercially, that's more common that you're doing those succession crops.
Jessica : Right.
Jessica : Right.
Plant People: Do you guys do do much of that?
Jessica : Yeah. No.
Plant People: do you not? Okay.
Jessica : so mean well we We are in full tomato season.
Plant People: You're done You got other things to do. Okay.
Jessica : So we are tomatoes.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : We don't have the early stuff, right?
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : So I guess we're a later, a later, you know, getting tomatoes out. you know, crew and, um, so our tomatoes are just all green still right now.
Plant People: Yeah. yeah
Jessica : Like they're just now starting. So we usually don't have the space because we'll try to keep our tomatoes going as long as we can.
Plant People: Mine's the same. Yeah.
Jessica : So some, like we've before had them still coming on in September, you know, so we're going try to keep those tomatoes as alive and producing as long as possible until it gets really cold.
Jessica : So every year we talk about it Like we're going to do that.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : We're going to, Oh yeah, let's plant some stuff for, you know, the fall.
Plant People: It just seems like, yeah, you're a different person once fall comes.
Jessica : And then it's just so busy.
Plant People: Yeah. You're a different person than in the spring when you had all these aspirations and I'm the same way.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: One thing I do as a home gardener, I've done for a long time, but when I sucker my first thing of tomatoes, I do my first round of suckering. I'll take the suckers, just stick them in moist potting soil.
Plant People: And that's how I clone the plants. You get another, you get about an eight week jump. And I'll plant in succession using the suckers. But this year i was like, I don't know what it was. I just posted on Facebook and our neighborhood page and said, come get these plants. I had some beautiful transplants that I'd started from suckers and I was going to replant those. Nope.
Plant People: Gave them all away. I'm a different person now. I was like, this heat has got me in a mood.
Jessica : That's funny
Plant People: So this is a year I didn't do those succession plantings, but yeah, commercially those are, those are really important, but it's, it's sometimes a hard sell.
Jessica : Well, we're planning though for the play garden to add, add some stuff.
Plant People: Okay. Okay.
Jessica : They've had, they've requested carrots.
Plant People: oh I do love fall carrots.
Jessica : So, so try to do some carrots.
Plant People: um That's the crop that, yeah.
Jessica : Haven't been very successful with carrots in the past, but we're going to try it and see if we can, we can do it.
Plant People: Yeah. Okay.
Jessica : um So yeah, they have that. And they also requested spinach, which was kind of surprising, but so we'll see.
Plant People: Oh, that's another good one. Yeah. They need to grow some turnips. Turnips are a fun one in the fall.
Jessica : Yeah, I don't know we'll, maybe we'd eat turnips.
Plant People: That's it.
Jessica : and I don't know if any of us eat like beets or anything like that. But trying to think of what we could, they wanted to grow more onions and they wanted to grow more, more potatoes, of course.
Plant People: you Yeah.
Jessica : They wanted, let's do more potatoes. And I'm like, well, we got to wait for that. so
Plant People: Maybe we'll wait. Yeah. Some crops. I mean, we just mentioned a lot, like so certain crops you just can't get a fall crop out of. Most tomatoes are long season enough. It'd be very difficult unless they you had like you use suckers or something or did like an early girl.
Plant People: But yeah. Yeah. uh like the vine crops watermelons and things did they're just so long season sweet potatoes are one of those you could probably never do that because they're a long uh season crop but uh yeah there's other crops in the home garden they're actually i much prefer them in the fall but do i plant them now in the fall personally i sure don't because it's hot in the summer
Jessica : Yeah.
Jessica : yeah It's hot. There's more insect pressure too.
Plant People: yes yeah
Jessica : That's the other thing. A lot of times you have more issues with disease and insect just because their numbers are all built up. Like i suddenly with our little green bean patch, it is now full of stink bugs.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : awful Oh, of, yep.
Plant People: Japanese beetles yet, Jessica?
Jessica : Oh yeah.
Plant People: Oh yeah.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Jessica : I have a huge Japanese beetle outbreak this year.
Plant People: yeah a Healthy population.
Jessica : Yeah. Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : Um, but ah suddenly there's brown marmorated stink bugs as babies, the ones that'll come in your house this fall.
Plant People: Yeah.
Plant People: And they do not good things to like tomatoes and stuff.
Jessica : Um, they are out in storm.
Plant People: I mean, they, they, they do.
Jessica : Right.
Plant People: You want to describe the damage that you'll see from that? We get a lot of people bringing those in and wonder what it Yeah.
Jessica : Uh, Yeah, we call it it's on tomatoes like stippling, right?
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : So they have like a piercing, the piercing sucking mouth part. So think of it like as a needle, right? That they are stabbing into like the tomato and they make little ah yellow spots.
Jessica : Almost looks like um little yellow stars or something that are all like grouped together.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : And same thing with like corn. They'll feed on the corn through the shuck um and they, you know, will feed on individual kernels and they'll often turn like brownish color.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : um They feed on the green beans as well. And it just makes it like kind of like... Cory, like rough, rough.
Plant People: Rough, rough coded or whatever. Yeah.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: Corky. Yeah.
Jessica : corrky Yeah. So but they are out in storm now as the days as we continue on with summer. There are a lot of insect pests that I'm starting to see. Their numbers are really starting to build up that I didn't even see like, you know, a few weeks ago. But that's just, you know, their natural cycle as they go through the growing season.
Plant People: Yeah. But once again, you know, we've talked about all the things that can go wrong, especially with the heat. But even with saying all that, I'm getting garden stuff and it sounds like you are too, Jessica.
Jessica : Yeah, we're having fun.
Plant People: So we don't want to be such a downer here because ah you can manage all of this, especially through, you know, mulching and watering.
Jessica : Yeah. Yeah.
Plant People: timing your watering and in some cases I've seen home gardeners use u shade cloth in their home gardens to great effect and it's amazing and you can buy shade cloth in different weights to get the perfect I mean it's it's amazing what you can do and I've seen them do that ah yeah yeah yeah
Jessica : yeah
Jessica : like And you could do something so simple as I've known people who've like taken one of those big umbrellas that they use for like a table, you know, a lawn chair set and they like stick it out in their garden to cover and shade like lettuces or different things that need a little more shade. And then just like planting wise, right? Like we have a little bit of our sweet corn. We have a little bit of our purple sweet corn we're growing um in our play garden. yeah,
Jessica : You know, thinking about that, how the sun hits in the afternoon, you know, it's it's providing shade to the crop next to it.
Plant People: Plant and plant initially.
Jessica : So you can do different things like that to help, you know, prevent some of these these things from happening.
Plant People: Yeah.
Plant People: And that makes a huge difference, a little bit of evening shade.
Jessica : Yeah.
Plant People: And you do that intentionally. And corn is a great example that you can use that shade and be very intentional about it with certain crops.
Jessica : Mm-hmm.
Plant People: And the crops are way better ah if they get morning sun.
Jessica : Yep.
Plant People: But afternoon shade that really works in favor of certain garden crops. So you can you can kind of take advantage of some of those tall crops. and and kind of utilize that. But yeah, not to discourage anyone, gardens are still gardening, gardens are still producing, but the heat is its own challenge.
Jessica : They're fun.
Plant People: And if you do notice your gardening, your garden crops doing something kind of different or weird, or you notice those star shaped yellow spots all over your tomatoes, bring those in work.
Plant People: one of your local county extension offices and talk with the good folks there because heat can bring about its own challenges, but so for certain crops, we talked about certain vine crops, they kind of love it.
Plant People: Once they start growing, get the fruit on there, it can, you know, actually work in your favor. So all is not lost. It seems like, I mean, despite all of these things, we, most of us as home gardeners or commercial gardeners, uh,
Jessica : That's right.
Plant People: Horticulture folks, we bring in a crop each and every year. So, uh, gotta end on a positive note, huh?
Jessica : Right. Yeah.
Plant People: Yeah.
Jessica : No, it should be, it should be a fun experience. And if you, you know, you lose some plants, that's okay.
Plant People: Oh yeah.
Jessica : Everybody does.
Plant People: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica : Even the most experienced people do.
Plant People: Yeah. I just plant some extra.
Jessica : yeah.
Plant People: I just plant some extra. And once again, we were talking about the garden bounty and that can be a frustration point all in its own, I guess, Jessica.
Jessica : Right, yeah.
Plant People: And everything comes in at once. I'm talking about all of these problems that I'm having.
Jessica : as So much squash.
Plant People: But yeah, my squash this year is one thing, up but I am looking at you green tomatoes on my vine and I planted a lot of heirlooms this year. So I'm going to have, if everything goes well, I should have a good crop of heirlooms, but they're green right now.
Plant People: They're long season heirlooms, but I look forward to having those guys here soon. And I'm watching them. And as soon as they go into breaker stage, the best thing I can tell people is that if you're experiencing any kind of sun scald or problems on a crop like tomatoes, pick those early and just set those.
Jessica : huh
Plant People: i just set them on the counter in the kitchen out of direct sunlight and they wrap in beautifully.
Jessica : Especially those heirlooms because they are just some of them are so fragile.
Plant People: as Oh yeah. The heirlooms doesn't mind.
Jessica : So just get them early.
Plant People: That's a great point. Yeah. And they're long season and they're more prone to some problems with the sun and things.
Jessica : Cool.
Plant People: But yeah, as soon as they start to pink up, I get those off the vine and harvest those in and they're just fine. That's one of my tricks that I do at home. So... All righty. I think that just about wraps us up, Jessica. Well, thank you for joining Jessica and I. As we mentioned earlier, I think Brett and Alexis will be on the next episode. We're all just trying to make it through summer right now.
Plant People: But in the near future, the whole podcast crew will be back together. But we thank you for joining us today. And if you want to reach out to us, you can always look down in the show notes. All of our contact information is there. And we'll link up some publications. ah that deal directly with managing kind of your garden crops as it relates to heat and any other links like that. We always put those in the show notes, but thank you guys so much. We'll see you next week. Thank you.
