Flowering summer veggies in cooler weather

Despite being unable to speak, all the veggies are happy that the temperature is cooling down after a long heat wave in the triple digits.

Two weeks of temperatures over 100 degrees caused all the plants to look a little stressed out even though we were watering them more than normal.

With the heat they put all their energy into staying alive and now that it is cooler they can use that energy to produce more flowers that will turn into delicious summer veggies.

The stress of the heat also causes for some crops to not ripen until the plants are not stressed. These cooler temperatures will reduce that stress and speed back up the ripening process.

Some of the first plantings of some summer crops are barely hanging on and luckily we don’t need then anymore with the amount of successions we plant for most of them.

Even if a variety is classified as indeterminate where it keeps on producing throughout the season there is a peak season that is a number of weeks and then it keeps producing but with less needing to be harvested.

All the indeterminate crops that flower to fruit had the flowers drop but now are producing more flowers. This can cause a short decrease in production until the new flowers produce more fruit.

Typically in June we have a big flush of eggplant before it slows down until August but this year up until this month there has not been too much. The inconsistent weather seemed to prevent the flowers from successfully forming fruit then but now there is a decent amount.

We’ve got all the same varieties as the past with the standard Italian globe eggplant, a a striped globe one called Annina, two long Asian varieties and two round Italian varieties perfected to be sliced and grilled.

All of them are very flavorful and the main difference is the way in which you cook them. The glove varieties break down while cooking more while the other types will hold their structure better so they are ideal for putting on the grill.

Last week we were able to harvest our spring planted onions cure them. The curing pulls out some of the water in the yellow and red onions helping the onion flavor be stronger.

The first fall direct seeded veggies of carrots, beets and turnips are happy that the weather is cooling down slightly ahead of them going in the ground. The cooler weather will keep the soil more moist and allow for a better germination than in triple digit temperatures.

The crucial stage for all the direct seeded crops is germination where they are most fragile and once they start developing roots it becomes slightly easier to stay alive and thrive.