If you grow food, you might know different years come with success and failure. This year in my part of the world we had a heat dome, smoke and more bugs then I could deal with. This is one of my late fruits of all the work.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Heat Dome weather front “Summertime means hot weather — sometimes dangerously hot — and extreme heat waves have become more frequent in recent decades”. Sometimes, the scorching heat is ensnared in what is called a heat dome. This happens when strong, high-pressure atmospheric conditions combine with influences from La Niña, creating vast areas of sweltering heat that gets trapped under the high-pressure “dome.” Definition used from National Ocean Service
Many of my plants had struggled.
In late March my seedling got sick in the house garden. I do try to grow all year. So I plant small cucumbers, cherry tomatoes and other crops to get a good start before summer. I was so sad when everything got sick despite peroxide spray treatments and good air flow.
Some of the plants that did well were my grapes, which were picked On Aug 31 2021. I’m not sure about the weight of them yet. We have had so many potatoes, currants, pac choi and onions. One of the onions was as big as my hand. I had a couple of my watermelons survive and now I have late watermelons. Our night temperatures are at 11°C or 51.8°F and daytime highs at 22 to 25° C or 71.6 to 77° F. Last year we had 3 watermelons around Oct 10 2020. So maybe we will have some this year too. I planted the seedlings in the community garden on July 1 2021, I started them in clear cups months before then.
I hope to make up for beans being eaten by something other than us, greens that burnt or bolted due to the heat dome and powdery mildew. My plant’s health was weakened by the strange conditions.
A few weeks back we planted fall crops of beans, beets, peas, carrots, onions, pac choi and greens. We will see if much comes up. Some have come up and we will see what does well. I feel the need to tell you carrots were planted 3 times over the season and only one came up. Because they take about 70 days to grow we will not be planting more this year.
Happy planting please tell me what challenges and success you had growing food.
This is where it starts 