No, I haven’t dropped off the face of the earth. It’s just that it’s been too hot here in southern California to do much gardening. (And it’s only August! September and October are typically also very hot and dry.) I’ve also been working on a couple of non-gardening home-improvement project. For the past month, I have done no new gardening– instead, I’m reaping the rewards of the gardening I did when it was cooler. The garden looks awful but is yielding prolifically.

The corn came and went on schedule. It was excellent. There’s nothing left of it but a couple of jars of corn relish, and the leavings in the compost heap. All my taste-testers agree that the Ruby Queen variety was better than the Chubby Checkers type.

My tomatoes are growing well, though the plants themselves are having a tough time in the heat. My sister and I have canned quite a few quarts of tomatoes, tomato sauce, catsup, and salsa. By the end of the season, we should be all set to overwinter without any fresh tomatoes.

I bought some seeds for a heat-tolerant tomato variety called “Heatwave II” which supposedly can handle full sun and up to 100 degrees F. I’ve only just planted them in peat pots, and they’ll be transplanted to the regular garden in a couple of weeks. If they bear according to the instructions, they should start producing by the end of September. Which will be excellent timing, because I doubt any of the other plants will still be alive by then.

Some of my peppers are doing quite well. The red bells and the true jalapenos are producing, but the “false alarm” jalapenos haven’t done much yet. The yellow bells have a very bad whitefly infestation, and those plants will be coming out as soon as the current crop ripens.

The second crop of figs has begun to ripen. As expected, they are more prolific than the breba crop, but not as nice (they’re smaller and tougher.) Most of these will be used for canning and cooking. Here’s an excellent recipe for pickled figs.

It’s a bit cooler today, and I plan to lay out some sprinkler lines in what was the cornfield. The next crop to plant in that area will be eggplants, some of the Heatwave tomatoes, and some pickling cucumbers. All those should be heat tolerant enough to make it through the rest of the summer here in the southern California semi-desert, but they need more water than the corn did.