hot weather in the vegetable garden

This week and particularly tomorrow is HOT temperature wise. I went out a little later this am and only lasted 1 hour. Trying to get winter and summer squash seeds in their prospective beds. I had to redesign and replace the drips but I burnt out before actually getting the seeds in. So I will get up early tomorrow and finish the job-then I am done with putting in the garden! Well not exactly but should get easier. Right now there are lots of seeds out in the garden covered with row cover to keep birds/mice from eating anything as it comes up. I can water right on top of the row cover which will keep the seeds from moving around, especially flower seeds which were broadcast across an area.

I would encourage everyone to water their veggie crops 2x a day here in Santa Fe while we are having this extreme heat wave. The heat is really taking a toll and many plants are stressed to the max right now. Do not fertilize anything in this heat as that might add to their stress. Instead you might water with sea weed and SuperThrive or Vit. B which are good for plant stress. Don’t plant any seeds right now while the heat is on, rather wait till it is cooler and the soil can be kept moister.

Also adding row cover or shade cloth over plants should help. If you have any fencing, you could cut a piece and open it over your bed and put the shade cloth or row cover on top of that which the plants will love even more as the cloths will not rub on them but if not just put some medium weight row cover over them which won’t weigh too heavily. I would not use heavy weight row cover as it will not breathe and the row cover should not be tight over them.

Once we are over this period, you could go back to watering 1x a day and take off the row cover once the monsoons come-hopefully in the next few weeks but leave the row cover just to the side of the bed in case we get a hail storm, then I put it back over the bed again. This is of course assuming we get the monsoons!