These are trying times for humans who work outdoors. We start as early as we can and try to stop by about lunchtime when the air is so soggy. The first few hours are not so bad, but after about 10:00 we are toiling, not just working. When we look at the plants, we see that they are pretty happy in this sauna. Squash and tomatoes and peppers and eggplant--they all thrive in this heat and humidity. The occasional thundershower perks them up. When it stays this hot all night long, the squash just keep on growing. However, night time heat is not good for tomato pollination. If it doesn't get below 70 degrees, the blossoms just fall off instead of starting to become tomatoes.
The good news is that watermelons from Next Step Produce are on the way. And The Farm at Sunnyside just started picking their summer variety of organic apples, Pristine. These are tiny, flavorful apples that are unusually beautiful for organic fruit!
All of our coolers are filling up with vegetables that can be stored for a while: onions, beets, cabbage. In fact we were lucky that our big cooler broke and was repaired before we started collecting up the onions. We have a 38 degree cooler, one that is about five degrees warmer and then four other spaces that stay between 50 and 60. In this heat, we can't just leave the vegetables outside all the time. They melt, just like us.
It feels like tomatoes are just on the brink. And that's when it really feels like summer to us--tomatoes are the definition of summer, and all this heat is part of that.
