What's wrong with my veggies?

This is my first year gardening. Things were going great until about a week ago. My veggies started showing some sign of distress.

The edges of my arugula leaves are white. My radish leaves are yellowing. Some spinach leaves are wilting. My tomatoes are growing like mad, the cucumber plant seems happy, the tender green bush beans look happy, marigolds are blooming, etc.

it's been pretty hot the past couple of days. I've watered about one a day or every two days.

Some of the veggies are showing signs of distress--as crazy as it sounds, I'm not sure if it's from too much watering or not enough. Or maybe it's just too sunny out there?

i'm trying to post images, but I can't figure out how to do it. When I click "host an image," I get a pop up for servimg.com. It looks like an ad. I'll look around and try to figure out how to post photos. Any tips?

Boffer has placed step by step instructions on how to post pics at
http://squarefoot.creatingforum.com/t843-how-to-post-pictures-from-your-personal-album. Try it and see if it works for you.

Thanks Sherryeo!

Here are my radishes:



Arugula:





Spinach:



Sorry these photos are a little blurry. I took them as the sun was just setting last night, so the light was low.

I water the 4'x4' enough to keep the soil moist to the touch. Maybe that's too much? Or maybe, since the temps have been in the 80s this week, it hasn't been enough?

I successfully grew healthy radishes about a month ago.

Thanks for any thoughts!

All the veggies you have mentioned as having problems don't like heat. You could try to shade them somehow. When you plant your next crop you may want to try to find a shadier part of the garden.

Thanks, Buena. I have a 3x3 chicken wire cage that I set on top of the front 3x3 area of the 4x4 to protect the veggies from animals (the back 4 squares are for trellised tomatoes and cucumbers). I could easily drape something over that. Maybe cheesecloth as Mel suggests in the first version of the book.

Sudden onset of heat is where I was heading, too. The "white" on the arugula looks more like the corners turning up and wilting to me. I think you are headed for bolting and there isn't much you can do about it.

When spring jumps right into summer, it can really bite a garden. Especially, when the garden had a very late start to spring. I think we are going to hear a lot of this in the coming weeks.

Darn it!

It did get hot pretty quick. People are joking that summer is already here. And we started the garden pretty late. We planted the seeds on April 24 (Easter).

So what should I have done to avoid this? Give them some shade?

I put some cheesecloth on a cage today. A little too late, it sounds like:



I guess I'll read up on what's good to plant now for the hot summer months--to replace the arugula and anything else that's going to bolt. Any suggestions? Thanks!

Chard can usually handle the heat better than most greens. You could replant the arugula, etc in a shadier area or after putting shade cloth to cool it some.

My kale seems to be holding up well in the 90+ days we had this week. I've been harvesting leaves from the bottom up and the stalks are now about 2 1/2 ft tall. So I have a question for anyone who has grown kale. The seed pack says "height 24" and mine has already exceeded that. Will the kale stalk keep growing or will it begin to stop putting out new leaves from the center? I want to get a continuing crop all summer long. Should I try to direct seed some more kale into other squares and will it germinate/grow in the heat? This is for the "pond" garden at my son's house. It gets constant wicking water and we can make arrangements for a shade cloth.

Kay

walshevak wrote:My kale seems to be holding up well in the 90+ days we had this week. I've been harvesting leaves from the bottom up and the stalks are now about 2 1/2 ft tall. So I have a question for anyone who has grown kale. The seed pack says "height 24" and mine has already exceeded that. Will the kale stalk keep growing or will it begin to stop putting out new leaves from the center?

Yes, it will keep growing, but eventually it will want to bolt and flower.

walshevak wrote: I want to get a continuing crop all summer long. Should I try to direct seed some more kale into other squares and will it germinate/grow in the heat?

Yes, but if you have a place that has less than the 6 hours of sun, you may have better results there during the height of summer. Or you can wait and start seeds in august for autumn and winter crop.

walshevak wrote:This is for the "pond" garden at my son's house. It gets constant wicking water and we can make arrangements for a shade cloth.

Kay

Sweet!!