Any tips to get flowers to set in temps over 90F?

[aclum]

Dewayne,

I was basically thinking of something very similar to what you are describing EXCEPT, as Naysen mentioned:

"So far, I haven't managed to create something that will work for my difficult, terraced beds with external rock/boulder soil that will not take a spike for support."


Naysen,

Sorry to make things needlessly complicated. I get carried away at times !

I just wanted you to know (in case you didn't already) that it's a fairly simple task to drill holes for your vertical supports into your concrete retaining walls (even with uneven surfaces) - if that's what you want to do. One just needs a hammer drill or impact drill and an appropriate masonry bit. These can be rented at places like home depot or a regular tool rental place, but probably easier just to hire someone (from a masonry or concrete firm) and have them drill a few holes for you. A quick web search shows lengths of 22" (which should be plenty deep enough) and hole diameters of 1" plus (and smaller) being fairly common.

The rest of the ideas/instructions in my post were just "gilding the lily" .
And meant to confuse you ! (Just kidding ).

Anyway, good luck with things! Sounds like you're making progress with what you're currently doing.

Anne

[Spartanburg123]

Try the electric toothbrush at 10 am on a few prone blooms- collect pollen on a nearby leaf. Cut off the leaf, and drag the stigmas from several nearby flowers through this pollen. Hopefully the pollen can migrate down the style before it becomes too hot for pollen to survive. Just a suggestion!

[z_willus_d]

Hey DM-

I'm glad you've found a low-tech, simple solution for shading your garden. It wouldn't work well for my setup. I'm only growing corn and cucumbers in the EarthTainers. I'm still on my fools-quests to find a way to grow tomatoes, peppers, eggplant in V. and F. (multi-races) infested beds. My property is basically on a hill that is man-augmented to be full of river-rocks and boulders of every size and shape, so there truly is no space on my property where you can drive a stake down for more than say 8" tops before it hits some impenetrable boulder or stone. The only way I've dealt with this is with pick and shovel and brute labor. So if I needed to put a stake 18" in the ground, I would have to dig a 2-foot diameter hole down at least a foot, and since all my garden beds are on top of terraces that are themselves structurally precarious, I'm not interested in digging large holes at their bases. Inside the beds, I have the nice soft soil that I'm growing in, so it doesn't make a good receptor of staking or supports for the opposite reasons.

BTW, when I returned home from work yesterday, I was dismayed to find my entire PVC rig with shade-cloth had toppled head-over heals. All the corn stocks took a real bush-whacking. I'm not sure how well they'll recover. I'm holding off on adding the cloth back until I can convince myself that this will not happen for again (for the umpteenth time). I'm thinking to weight down the bases of my pVC structure and cut holes in the shade "sail" to hopefully reduce the drag it can pull.

--naysen

[z_willus_d]

Originally Posted by aclum

Dewayne,

I was basically thinking of something very similar to what you are describing EXCEPT, as Naysen mentioned:

"So far, I haven't managed to create something that will work for my difficult, terraced beds with external rock/boulder soil that will not take a spike for support."


Naysen,

Sorry to make things needlessly complicated. I get carried away at times !

Hi Anne, I'm still not visualizing how the holes in my "wall" will work. These are stack-able retaining wall blocks, so each block is ~1" inset from the next. If I were to lay a straight-pipe across their front face, it would run at an angel from the ground up (not 90-degree, orthogonal to the ground). Also, the blocks aren't cemented to each-other, so as you work to the upper rows of blocks, they're actually easy to shift around and they really wouldn't hold much force in any direction, except maybe down, before shifting and moving about. Here's a link to one type I used:
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Unbranded...A001/100569387

-naysen

I just wanted you to know (in case you didn't already) that it's a fairly simple task to drill holes for your vertical supports into your concrete retaining walls (even with uneven surfaces) - if that's what you want to do. One just needs a hammer drill or impact drill and an appropriate masonry bit. These can be rented at places like home depot or a regular tool rental place, but probably easier just to hire someone (from a masonry or concrete firm) and have them drill a few holes for you. A quick web search shows lengths of 22" (which should be plenty deep enough) and hole diameters of 1" plus (and smaller) being fairly common.

The rest of the ideas/instructions in my post were just "gilding the lily" .
And meant to confuse you ! (Just kidding ).

Anyway, good luck with things! Sounds like you're making progress with what you're currently doing.

Anne

[BigVanVader]

I didn't real through all the post but I will add that any type of mulch makes a noticeable difference in fruit set IMHO (I use 4 inches min of wood chips.) I have alota Brandywines this year and all are flowering now with daytime highs in the mid 90s, so I guess I will know pretty soon what kinda fruit set I get. Either way I'm a huge believer in always having your soil covered, especially in the south.

[Courtgreenhous]

Great White Mycorrhizae, Humic Acid, Kelp, Agsil16H and fish hydrolysate are all supplements that can help your plant endure the heat stress. See my thread growing in high temps.

[Stvrob]

The harvest of Great White Mycorhizae, as well as their fins, has been outlawed by the international fisheries convention.

[Courtgreenhous]

Originally Posted by Stvrob

The harvest of Great White Mycorhizae, as well as their fins, has been outlawed by the international fisheries convention.

Hopefully we speak of the same thing, haha.

http://www.plant-success.com/index.p...corrhizae.html

[b54red]

I planted another bed of tomatoes a bit over a week ago so they will be trying to set fruit in the worst of the heat. I already have them mulched with cypress mulch but need to add some more to keep the soil cool as possible. I also went out and bought a cheap electric toothbrush to see if it will add to my fruit set in this bed of tomatoes. I have more of the proven heat setting varieties in this bed but I would like to see if I can get even heavier fruit set in the mid summer heat by using the toothbrush method. They should be blooming in a few days or a week and I'll give it a try. It would be something if I could get really heavy fruit set in the middle of the summer.

Bill

[aclum]

Hi Naysen,

I see what you mean about the slope of your wall presenting problems. Using the dimensions from your link showing the wall block you used, I did a quick sketch of the wall in vertical cross-section with each tier of blocks set back an inch. I've indicated where you might bore a 1" diameter hole through several layers of the wall to insert the rebar or whatever support poles. Hopefully the pdf will attach OK. I think it's pretty self-explanatory (planter soil would be to the left of the sketch).

Here's an example of a 16" drill bit - but you can get them longer (16" might be enough). Be sure and read the review .

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Bosch-1-i...2167/100209210#

You could very well come up with a better/easier solution (actually draping material over your cages sounds like a good idea ) but this is an alternative for you to consider.

BTW, if your block walls are as unstable as you say, you might want to use some rebar or something to stabilize things a bit before this coming winter in case we get the predicted El Nino.

Anne

[z_willus_d]

Anne, I finally begin to visualize what you had in mind. Are you a civil engineer BTW? Nicely drawn, your diagram. I originally thought you were suggesting the drill hole would be through the "x" dimension of the blocks and that the pole would then be attached with a bracket and bolts. I think my main issue with what you're proposing here would be for the fact that we would now have a large lever bar inserted within the wall. I've noticed that the wall does well in supporting any horizontal force that presses against it from within (where the soil is that it retains), but if one applies force to the blocks from without, it is easy to see the blocks shift and "bend" inward (since there is no lock holding them in place in that direction. If you were to push one of the upper 2-3 blocks, it will just slide into the soil/bed. This has happened to me on several occasions. The lower blocks when pushed just tend to sway the entire wall, but it seems to recover back after the force is removed. So, yeah, I'm very intrigued by what you're proposing, but I'm sure what a 8-10'foot lever inserted into the hole in my wall will produce. It might make for an easy tumbling. Maybe I'll propose this to my brother in law, who is an civil engineer and see what he thinks.

Thanks for the suggestions and great drafting work!
-naysen

[OkieDan]

Maybe cement a garage door spring cemented into concrete blocks. They used to make portable signs that way.

[z_willus_d]

Okie, that would make for one wobbly shade structure. We'll call it bizzaro shade system.

Actually, Anne the more I think about it, the more I'm growing keen on your suggestions. I'm wondering if that same hammer-drill/SDS bit combo would work to drill straight down into my ground (sand, gravel, river rocks, etc.). If I could drill deep enough holes through my foundation, I could leave the walls alone. In any event, I need to do something like this for the other side of the bed that's just abutting my back yard.

And, of course, the real reason for all this is it gives me an excuse to buy this drill set that I've wanted for a while now:
http://www.homedepot.com/p/DEWALT-20...90L2/202922445

Thoughts?
-naysen

[Courtgreenhous]

Originally Posted by ScottinAtlanta

Here is a business plan for someone: Harvest good pollen, and sell it by the vial to those us in high temp areas. When ours is denatured, we crack open the vials.

"The critical importance for increased longevity by using high quality pollen desiccating it sufficiently in a rapid manner and subsequently storing it at very low temperatures. Reliable viability assessments are dependent upon adequate rehydration and the use of reliable stains."

Crop Genebank Knowledge Base

ScottinAtlanta: Could we not save our own pollen ahead of time in the earlier season and apply when high temperatures creep in? What kind of storage would you recommend, freezing? Does light degrade pollen's viability? Thanks in advance.

[aclum]

Hi Naysen,

Whew! I'm glad you're intrigued by my suggestions. I was afraid I was being too pushy in maybe "telling you what to do!"
I guess a picture IS worth a thousand words at times

No, I'm not a civil engineer (but have worked as an architectural, technical, and land use planning modelbuilder and took a lot of applicable college courses for that). If you brother is a civil engineer, by all means, ask for his advice!!! Things can get complicated with a possibly unstable hillside, and I'm certainly no expert on the subject. Actually, even without the garden, I'd be inclined to ask a civil engineer or the like for advice on how to stabilize your wall/hillside in the event of a severe El Nino, earthquake, or whatnot.

On the planter or retaining wall again... One problem I can envision from the pole going through the stack of wall blocks (as shown in my sketch) and possibly acting as a lever is that if you pushed the pole inward (towards the soil) or outward (towards the downslope) hard enough, the whole wall section could be pushed over in that direction. A solution would be to fasten cross bars to the tops of the vertical poles to tie everything together. BTW, I'd use metal of some sort - like rebar - rather than PVC.

I love that drill kit you linked to! I don't have a link right now, but I believe that there are bits that would work your gravelly soil. The drill would probably pay for itself in doing a lot more than just helping you set up poles for your shade cloth .

(If I can make one more suggestion - I would invest in some new lightweight shade cloth. Besides being easier to install, it won't stress your supports as much as a heavier shade cloth).

Anne