Anyway, the heat has been having different effects on the pots. Strangely enough the plants I thought would be more susceptible to the heat, barrels containing potatoes and watermelon, have done better and the plants I thought would love it, tomatoes and peppers, have taking the biggest hit. The reason I say this is I have read other deck container gardeners attempts and they have almost always noticed that any pot that is actually on the deck, not suspending above like my window boxes, heat up too much, causing the soil to almost cook the plant's roots. Doesn't seem to be the case on my Deck. I'll show you what I mean.
First the good. Here are my Water Melon and Potatoes barrels:
Only the one potato barrel, but two pics. See...they both are doing gangbusters. I can almost taste those buttered spuds and juicy melons.
However, in the other corner, we have our Tomatoes and Peppers:
As you can see, the bottom leaves of all the plants are yellow and dead. Now, at first I thought I was either over or under-watering. So I bought a handy dandy soil moisture meter
. It works great and I found out that I've been right on target with the watering...keeping the soil moist, but not to wet or to dry. NOTE: See my new Banana Pepper
plant in the Terra Cotta
pot? Thank you for the millions of suggestions for this pot, unfortunately I had to chose only one and that turned out to be my two year old's suggestion. She thinks it's gonna be a Banana Tree.Last, but not least there's the Sunflower Box:
Nothing to report here other than steady growth. 10 days and at least two, maybe three inches...they love the heat.
Two final things to add. Since it has been so hot I've rigged some shade for the plants during the hottest part of the day and setup our kiddie pool
on the deck. Hoping that a) the shade will keep the blazing sun from killing everything on the deck and b) so the kids can play and splash all over the deck...which provides a great water source for all the plants.As always, Keep Farming and Keep it Lazy!
