My two squash beds with a tomato bed in the center. Under the squash, I planted purple top turnips with my sand shaker. The turnips will be a winter crop when the squash is gone. The tomato bed has tomatoes down the middle with fall onions down the sides. The onions are doing great having been planted as tiny seedlings less than a month. They love the heat. The sunscreen protects the young tomatoes which would have simply withered and died in the high heat without it. (Click photo to enlarge)
This bed started the year as my garlic bed with yard long beans on the trellis, and Prudens Purple tomatoes on the rope trellis. The garlic, beans, and tomatoes did well. The other side of the trellis was my carrot bed which also did well. It now holds four varieties of heirloom tomatoes in front, "Sweet Success" cucumbers on the trellis, and Mesculin salad greens mix in front and back of the wire trellis.
Mesculin mix on the back side of the cucumber trellis. It's still a little hot for it to grow, but it will when it cools a little more.
How about a six foot tall Jalapeno plant loaded with tiny peppers.
or a three foot tall Habenero plant loaded with small green peppers.
This is my tomato cuttings bed where I am growing cuttings of all my spring heirloom tomatoes hoping for at least some tomatoes which didn't produce at all in the early spring heat. It took me a lot of attempts, but I finally learned in my summer climate, I have to provide a sunscreen or shade relief for the cuttings or they will simply wither and die in the high heat.
My Armenian cucumber bed with eggplant on both ends. This bed started the spring as a mixed bed of normal cucumbers and Armenians. The normal cucumbers died early in the high summer heat and left the Armenians to prosper.
Under the canopy of the Armenian trellis, you can see a lot of the dead leaves of the normal cucumbers which died back in July. You can also see the mix of the Armenian cucumbers which seem to develop depending on the heat. In the high heat, the melon shaped cucumbers grow. We had a few cool days and nights resulting in the long, slender typical Armenian cucumbers. All are growing on the same vines. I am letting the largest one grow until it is absolutely ripe to see if it will develop any kind of a melon flavor instead of a cucumber taste.
My Sweet Success cucumbers are only about three weeks old, but are loaded with these tiny cucumbers which will grow to about fourteen inches in length. These fruit don't require any polination to set and every bloom sets a fruit because the variety only has female blooms.
When some of the fall plants finish production, I will plant more Swiss Chard and Lettuce for a spring crop. I have seed for a few other veggies, but I haven't decided which to plant yet.
Ted
