An evening stroll through Gidget's Garden

It has been a very hot and humid few days in San Diego, we even had rain pouring down, which is quite odd for us. Muggy doesn't even begin to describe the feeling but I think Farmer D had it about right yesterday afternoon when he said he felt like someone stuck him in a sauna.

With as much as the humans and pets are not having fun, the plants don't seem to mind a bit, as a matter of fact, I think some of them even like this weather. I don't do much in the garden when the weather is like this except plan. Last night I took a walk around as the sun was setting so I could evaluate what will need to be done in the next couple weeks.

Fall rooftop tomatoes in EarthBox, with red "mulch" 

I put these Oregon tomatoes in on Sunday evening before the weather became oppressive and they seem to be doing just fine. We are going to try to keep tomatoes going into winter on the rooftop because we get 9 hours of sun up there even on the shortest days. The Oregon variety is tolerant of cooler temperatures so hopefully they will be successful.

The bell peppers sure like the heat

The spiders seem to love this weather too, they're spinning their webs everywhere, even on the moon. 

I call this eggplant lunch! They are thriving in the heat too. 

This butternut squash that volunteered finally seems to be taking off

Our backyard is looking a little like a jungle

Habanero peppers on left and herbs on right, the squash I initially planted up here did not do well  

None of these plants will need attention for another month or more but we do have a number of plants that need attention now. Our corn is ready to come out and be replaced with some fall season crops and the sunflowers are most likely ready to harvest too. We have one last Kabocha plant that needs to be removed and a couple of our pepper plants are probably just about done now too. I'm hoping to have just the right amount of space open up to get a great start on my fall plantings while allowing the rest of the warm season crops to finish out their growing cycle.   

I imagine San Diego is one of the only places in the country where this approach would work. We get zero amount of freezing temperatures so I'll be starting "fall" crops all the way through winter and into spring.

The sun setting over downtown

I'm so happy that all of my plants appear healthy from the front of the big bed

The truth is that we have early blight on these tomatoes. One reason is that we didn't give them enough space so they are not getting the air circulation they need. They are still producing well even with the blight so we are just doing our best to keep them going. We are also dealing with more powdery mildew on the roses and cucumbers.

Signs of early blight on tomato leaf

These strawberries are taking off

But the mealy bugs on our other strawberries are persisting 

I am going to take the plants out of the EarthBox they are in, completely replace the soil, and sanitize the EarthBox. I plan to completely rinse the entire root before replanting. I will show you this in an upcoming blog post. I may end up killing the plants but I need to get the mealy bugs under control and I'm willing to lose the 6 plants that are infected in order to prevent the problem on all of my other strawberry plants or any other plants the mealy bugs may like.

At the end of my stroll, I found Sierra asking Gidget how she got INSIDE of the enclosure that is suppose to keep animals out.