Well, now, that's a little more like it. The past couple of weeks have resembled much more of a true Bay Area summer - foggy, windy, and cold. Daytime highs below 70°F and evening temps in the mid-50s. With the bay and ocean temps just outside the Golden Gate hovering in the low-50's this year, as opposed to 60°F+ last summer, we're seeing less of the atypical heat and warm evenings that we did last year. The peppers and tomatoes have been hanging in there though and should be able to get to the warm late summer and autumn weather intact.
Box 1 - the zucchini and summer squash have been doing spectacularly well this year. I've seen a bit of blossom end rot on a couple of the crook neck squash but the rest have been very healthy as have the zucchini. The plants had started growing towards the beans until I put up the small trellis between the two. Now the plants have redirected towards the outside of the box. One thing I learned for sure is to keep picking the fruit as it will grow too large to eat very quickly.
The beans are great but I probably planted too many again. I also didn't put enough supports for them so they may wind up strangling each other to some extent. We'll see but so far so good. The plants are just flowering now, we should be picking beans after another 10 days.
Box 2 - the tomatoes are doing fabulously well, so much an improvement over last year's disappointing results. I think this is mostly due to the wells I kept in the plants' perimeters, the heavy twice-weekly hand waterings (along with the once a week irrigation), and the thorough soil work I did before planting with steer manure, blood, and bone meal. I just fertilized them with the general food yesterday as a half-time measure to get them through fruiting.
My take is that the first third of growth should be to get the plants growing very healthy and green as preparation for the fruiting phase. I think that early fruiting, like last year's start in late May, indicates stress and is not something to hope for. Now that the fruits are coming out, the leaves and the overall greenery is starting to diminish which means that the plants are moving their focus from growth and plant establishment to fruit production. The plants will now start to diminish in beauty and will probably yield a shitload of tomatoes.
Box 3 - I'm keeping the onions in as long as I can before using them and before changing the box over to cole crops for autumn. This seems the best way to preserve them until use.
Box 4 had a poor result from the seedings of greens, beets, and radishes but that may have been a blessing. The plants that made it had much more room to grow and mature and have turned into a very nice yield. I just harvested the first batch of beets today and they were very good. The lettuces are now bolting but we had no lack of them to use over the past 6 weeks. The basil is also doing very well. Although the radishes are quite outsized now, the variety we planted have not turned hot at all and are still good for salads. The peppers are still doing well even with the recent cool weather. They are just starting to fruit.
Box 5 - the herbs are doing great I think mainly due to my diligence in keeping them trimmed. Apparently once they go into flowering the chemistry changes and the plants start to die so keeping the flowers down maintains the growth. I finally got chervil seeding started by moving them to a pot in the shade. It seems they are very sensitive to sun and heat. The only disappointment is the parsley which seems to have a hard time getting established from nursery starts.
