We had nearly a month straight without rain and the spider mites were awful and very hard to control. All of my spring planted big beautiful tomatoes are now mostly long stems with some green foliage at the top. There are still some of my last plants that I set out still putting out a fair amount of fruit but there is almost no new fruit with the past few weeks of nearly 100 degree days with no rain and spider mites to ruin the blooms. I do seem to have finally gotten the spider mites under control with frequent spraying with my new motorized fogger which makes short work of an awfully tiring task. It rained over a half inch last night and has rained a few tenths today and been mostly cloudy. Chances of rain for the next few days means the plants finally get a break and may set some more fruit for the fall if TYLCV doesn't show up this year. I am now thinking of starting a few seed for fall plants just in case summer ends early this year. A slim chance but it has happened before.
This has been a more than successful season and despite the heat and spider mites the tomatoes made a lot of fruit and disease problems almost disappeared with no rain to encourage them. The bell peppers are producing fairly well though a lot had sun scald and the leaf footed bugs have returned to try and mess up the peppers. Thank goodness for this rain because the peppers were really wilting every day leaving the fruits very vulnerable to sun scald. Hopefully these few days of rain will allow the plants to put on some more healthy foliage to protect the fruit better as fall approaches and down here fall is usually almost as hot as summer through September.
I know I will not plant nearly as many tomatoes or bell peppers next year as I did this season. I was trying out some new to me varieties and found some gems but it was just too much work taking care of that many plants. I ended up planting over 140 tomato plants and set them all up for lean and lower and also had over 50 bell peppers. Of course I lost a fair number of both to TSWV early in the summer and more to disease and spider mites this past month. I am going to have to start taking down the racks that supported the older tomatoes as soon as the weather permits so I can start getting a couple of beds ready for some greens and other winter crops.
Bill
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