Summer Vegetable Gardening Questions

by Gardens on Spring Creek

This is the time of summer gardeners’ love.  The efforts put in spring into August are now yielding the fruits of gardeners’ labors.  Tomatoes are ripening on the vine, peppers are plumping and coloring up, and the potential to provide the whole neighborhood with zucchini moves closer to reality.

Each growing season has its particular weather conditions, insect and disease issues, cultural challenges and gee-whiz successes. Additionally, each season also yields commonly asked questions.  I thought I would address the questions that have been asked most often this summer. 

* My summer squash plants are producing lots and lots of flowers and hardly any squash.  Why?

– Squash produce both male and female flowers.  The female flowers produce fruit.  Typically, the male blossoms sit atop a long stem, while squash blossoms form at the base of the female flower.  Squash require pollinators, such as bees, to set fruit.  If you have ample flowers, double-check that you also have pollinators in the garden.  It is common for a plant to initially produce more male than female flowers.  Additionally, prolonged hot temperatures, such as we experienced in July this year, cause the plants to produce primarily male flowers.  It is a response to stress.

* Most of my roma/paste type and some slicing tomatoes in my pots and raised beds have this brown contorted section at the bottom of the tomatoes.  My plant looks healthy, though.  What is happening?

– Likely that is blossom end rot.  That is not a disease or insect process.  Rather, it is the result of cultural practices regarding watering your plants.  Alternating flooding the pots or beds and then letting them become too dry between watering can cause blossom end rot.  To reduce the likelihood of this, provide even and consistent moisture to your plants.

* Some of the peppers on my plants have a light brown colored patch on them.  Some patches are thumbprint size, some stretch the length of the pepper.  What is happening?

– That sounds like sunscald.  Peppers grown on small, non-bushy plants are not able to provide adequate leaf canopy for maturing peppers.  The exposed surface of the pepper “burns” in the hot sunlight creating a thinned-skin brown patch.  Harvest the pepper before the sunscald softens and the pepper begins to rot.  Cut away the sunscald area and enjoy the rest of the pepper!

* Sometimes I get cucumbers that are shrunken in the middle or tapered and curved at the end of an otherwise full cucumber.  What makes that happen?

– I was taught to pickle by a sweet, elderly woman who referred to them as “nubbins”.  An apt name.  Cucumbers like to grow fast.  If during their quick journey to maturity, they do not receive sufficient water or insect pollination they may form as “nubbins”.   Prolonged periods of excessive heat may contribute to it.  Generally, they do not hold up well for pickling whole, yet are fine to eat fresh.