|
During the recent hot weather you probably
noticed your French Beans would not form, but the flowers aborted and fell off.
That’s not because the bees will not work on days of 39°C, it’s a natural
response by nature, who thinks it’s just too darn hot to bother! Beans are self
pollinating, they don’t need bees. Tomatoes may
flower in the really hot weather, but they will not form fruit on those days when
it’s over 32°C continuously. So only when the cool change sets in will they start to
set fruit. Even shading the plants does not change this, since it’s the air
temperature that determines the fruit set.
There are lots of seed too that will not germinate when
conditions are really hot, no matter how moist you keep the seedling media. The exceptions
are Sunflowers, Okra or "Lady’s Finger" and the purple globe amaranth,
Gomphrena.
You do however get a very rapid germination as soon as
things cool down a bit and you can also trick nature, by putting your sown seed trays into
the crisper of your fridge for a few days (that’s about 3-4°C) then out under shade
and they germinate quickly. The process is called stratification and works even on seed
that do not have a cool temperature requirement.
Another seed sowing trick to get rapid germination is to
use "Russian Water". That’s water that has been boiled and capped before it
cools, then refrigerated and used to water your seed. It is essentially de-oxygenated
water and it makes all seed germinate faster. Try it! As for why it’s
‘Russian’, apparently it was a Russian scientist why discovered the technique
and the benefits.
If your Tomatoes are wilting and yet you water them
religiously, they have probably contracted one of the soil-borne fungal diseases, either
Fusarium Wilt or Verticillium Wilt. Both are terminal diseases for your tomato plants and
can only be controlled by planting onto mounds so that you have better drainage or plant
resistant F1 seedlings, such as ‘Mighty Red’, ‘Ultra Boy’,
‘Tropic’, ‘Super Beefsteak’, ‘Supermarmande’ and the
‘Combo Collection’ of ‘Prism Gold’, ‘Prism Red’ and
‘Prism Pink’. The popular old ‘Grosse Lisse’ has no resistance at all.
|
