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Originally Posted by Dewayne mater
Banner year for me in DFW. However, we've also been as lucky weather wise as we've been in the 20 plus years I've been doing this. We've really only had one super hot and humid week so far. Lots of rain and much of that coming spaced several days apart. Lots of cool temps - relatively - highs in the upper 80s to low 90s, low in the low 70s. That's bound to play out soon, but, wow.
Quick OT for you. When you lower and lean, do you remove all the leaves touching the ground? Due to dumb luck, my lean and lower plants have very little disease this year, so, I've not had to remove as many leaves as usual. So, now I have vines with leaves on the ground and miraculously, so far that has not resulted in disease. Maybe my heavy use of cotton burr compost is responsible?
One last note, after removing some stems that I didn't keep trimmed to 2 stems per plant, I got a flush of fruit set that seemed to happen when we had the hot weather. Do you think cutting back excess foliage forced the plant to set fruit on existing flowers?
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Yes I try to remove all the leaves touching the mulch but can't always do that and provide some shade to fruit right near the ground or rather sitting on a piece of carry-out container. I frequently have seen new fruit set after some serious pruning. Maybe it does encourage fruit set I know it does in some situations. When a plant has too many growth tips it seems that despite the abundant blossoms that there is very little fruit set sometimes and a good pruning will help that. I first noticed this years ago when I had a huge Gary O' Sena plant that had multiple stems and too many suckers to count with blossoms galore but only two fruit set. I pruned off two wheelbarrows of foliage and reduced the plant to three or four stems from the ten or more and removed all suckers and within a week had a huge amount of new fruit showing up. Since then I have been a firm believer in good pruning for both health of the plant and production.
Our very hot and humid climate could be a reason that pruning is so much more effective than letting the plants grow to their hearts content. Just two days ago I did some serious pruning on some of my newer plants that are just getting about three to four feet up the strings and today despite the past two days hitting over 100 with a correspondingly high heat index most of those plants have set new fruit. I did water them and give them a dose of TTF right after finishing the pruning but then I try to do that every week anyway. Even though from years of seeing it I am still surprised that I get that much fruit set in these conditions. I'm just hoping the spider mites don't attack because this is perfect weather for them.
Bill