90. Heat and Sun
The garden is bearing up under this spate of extreme (for us) hot weather. Temperatures have been around 29-34 degrees over the last week, significantly hotter than the plants in my garden are used to. I have kept them well watered - thank heavens for pots with water reservoirs at the bottom!
The fruit loves the sun and are all ripening well: the apples, the plums (now all picked), the greengage (only 1 and I ate it immediately), the pears and the figs. The colours deepen a little every day and are starting to attract the birds’ attention.
The tomato bushes are absolutely laden with fruit but they are ripening quite slowly, much slower than I would have expected with all this sunshine. It puzzled me for a while until I read that the optimal ripening temperature for them is 20-25 degrees, and too much heat puts them into a kind of stasis. It turns out that seems to be correct because now that the temperature has dropped to the low 20s I am getting a lot of ripened fruit every day. Who would have known……
All the tomatoes are grown in pots with individual water reservoirs at the bottom. I keep those topped up every 3-4 days and it keeps the root systems moist, even in this hot weather. I used these pots for the cucumbers as well and am getting a daily crop from them, even though the leaves are looking a bit stressed. The cucumbers are used for Swedish cucumber pickle - I have a jar on the go for as long as they are producing.
The decorative elements of the garden are blooming too: the allium flower heads from last year’s onions, the large heads of white agapanthus (blue ones seem to be smaller), the highly scented sweet peas just starting to come out and the lovely “popsicle” red hot pokers that produce flower after flower. All of these usually grow well in the garden, but this year the flowers are really fabulous.
