Calling Tucson/Southern Arizona Gardeners

[tuk50]

The sweet potatoes grow well in the heat, but not excessive like we have.. I've found that you need to add a month or so to the harvest date and they are not overly large, but good size. Another problem I have had is with them splitting, but since I set up this garden three years ago I installed a timer irrigation and I've had no more splitting with regular watering all summer. I've grown them here in Tucson for years and this is the worst year ever.. I believe it is because we went from too cold at night to overly hot so quickly that it didn't allow them to get a good growth to stand up to the heat. I've got 3 varieties this year and all three are struggling. Another problem with them is pill bugs.. I use a lot of manure and straw mulch and with the regular irrigation pill bugs chew on the sweetpotatoes... I use dm when planting and a couple times before I use the mulch and it helps keep their numbers down. You mentioned planting melons late and I'm trying the same thing this year... I harvested my garlic beds last month and planted melons there and they are just now about 6in tall... if this works I'll probably do it every year in the old garlic beds and then be able to plant garlic again when they die back in October.

[macmex]

Last year I noticed the same thing about sweet potatoes and extreme heat. It was so extreme here for so much of the summer, following a very cool, wet spring; that our harvest was almost nil. We too experience cracking when we come out of our normal 8 week drought and get late summer rains. I cannot irrigate enough to prevent this. Fortunately, they heal up and are still good to eat.
Pill bugs are interesting. When we lived up North, I thought they never bothered garden plants. But for some reason, in some southern environments, they are terrible pests. I've heard that Sluggo will kill them, but haven't the experience to confirm it.

George

[tuk50]

I was the same way about the pill bugs... when I lived in Oklahoma we saw them all the time, but not in the numbers here when you keep compost and straw damp... so far the sweetpotatoes are the only thing that they eat a lot of.. I had some last fall weighing about 1.5lb and they had eaten over half of it. They don't seem to bother my beets, turnips, onions, leeks or garlic. I do have some small holes in the carrots and it may be them, but I'm not sure. DE controlls them to some extent... with repeated applications each time I add more mulch.. Bouregard does the best for me and Georgia Jet gets the biggest, but it is the one that cracks more than the others.

[flyingbrass]

Thanks for the info. I'll try to keep moisture as even as I can. I added the rest of my limited amount of compost to the sweet potato bed to serve as mulch.

I have a bermuda grass lawn front and back, and bottle trees in the front yard tend to drop a lot of leaves this time of year. That makes for a fair grass/leaf ratio to compost as bagged from the mower. BTW, you can also compost straight bermuda grass, though it's a pain. Turn every day for the first 4-5 days, else it will turn into stinky goo.

I have sow bugs all over the garden. I don't remember the last time I saw a pill bug, though they were plentiful here several decades ago. They are different creatures. Sow bugs won't roll up into a ball. From what I've read, and from experience, sow bugs prefer to eat dead vegetative matter, but will sometimes go after tender young plant growth. I haven't had any problems from them yet. I guess they are happy gnawing on the compost and horse manure. Pill bugs may be a different story.

It's odd how bugs home in on certain plants. I'm still squishing several leafhoppers every day found on my Charantais melons. They aren't on anything else.

I'll probably harvest my first melon tomorrow. Color is changing quickly. The bottom split last night. I'm growing 2 plants on that trellis. I made berms to separate the watering areas into outside and inside sections, so I can water more often without soaking all of their roots each time I water. So far, that seems to be working to prevent premature cracking. Look closely and you'll see the duct tape I put on the crack to keep out ants and other bugs.

[tuk50]

love that duct tape....

[flyingbrass]

Duct tape, JB Weld and baling wire hold the world together. Well, at least parts of it.

[tuk50]

Well, I just saw the weather forecast for next week and it starts at a 101 and goes up a couple of degrees each day through next Sunday. I don't think there is enough shade cloth to keep my garden below a 100degrees.... LOL!

[Direct Sunlight]

Originally Posted by tuk50

Well, I just saw the weather forecast for next week and it starts at a 101 and goes up a couple of degrees each day through next Sunday. I don't think there is enough shade cloth to keep my garden below a 100degrees.... LOL!

I know how you feel. Last year I should have been a part of this thread, because we had weather to match. Even here we aren't able to cope with 3 days in a row of 110 or more! It was all I could do to keep the garden from dying last summer, much less producing. The picture in my avatar was from a pink ponderosa in a much kinder year, 2010. Most of the tomato plants that year grew to 9 or 10 feet each, if they were straightened out.

[tuk50]

This is my worst tomato year in a long time... and it is all the weather.. out of 50 plants I've not had one with disease so far, but half have literally burned up the last week or so... but fortunately we picked our first okra this week and a couple of armenian cucumbers... ate our first eggplants yesterday ... and I planted a pole greenbean called Hopi Pink this year that is actually still producing /// I think it is because it is so bushy at the beginning before it starts to climb that is keeps a nice cool area at the base of the trellis... almost all of the beans are setting at ground level and only a very few on the vines...

[flyingbrass]

We never had luck with pole beans. They'd grow just fine, but not set. Maybe they weren't planted at the right time. I've never had that trouble with bush beans.

I'll probably pull the rest of my bigger, infected tomatoes within a week or two. There are still a few tomatoes left to ripen.

My 4 little Sophie's Choice plants look awful. Leaves are rolled. But, they keep producing and are continuing to grow little tomatoes. So far I've harvested 30 lbs. from them. 103 tomatoes. Average weight 4.68 oz. Largest 8.6 oz.

It's 109 right now on my back porch. We're supposed to warm up, which will be rough on the garden.

[desertlzbn]

It just started to rain here, first time since Feb. maybe monsoons will be here to stay

[flyingbrass]

For people having issues with the heat in this dry weather, have you tried a misting system or even a regular sprinkler on a timer? I wet down the bare dirt paths between my beds each afternoon, and it makes a huge difference.

[flyingbrass]

Originally Posted by desertlzbn

It just started to rain here, first time since Feb. maybe monsoons will be here to stay

Wow, that's a nice surprise. I thought hotter and dry was the continued forecast. We won't get anything but maybe some dust here in the Phoenix valley.

[desertlzbn]

It only rained for maybe 5 min so not so exciting, but it is still rumbling, maybe we will get more. just too bad I didn't see it coming I would have planted my tepary beans

[desertlzbn]

My harvest today
Had to pick a little early because of birds