Any tips to get flowers to set in temps over 90F?

[z_willus_d]

Hi Anne,

Actually, it's my brother-in-law. I may not have a chance to see him before this weekend when I plan to work this out. I have about 40 pepper, basil, and egg-plant seedlings that have all been sitting on the shady side of my yard waiting for me to get this shade-cloth up so I can plant them in my new bed. They're all starting to look sad and are certain to be root-bound, so I really need to take care of this job ASAP. I feel that planting them without shade will be a disaster too, since we have these insane temps and there's really no shade for this new bed.

I actually am now thinking the dewalt drill set might not be the right thing for me, since researching and finding posts/videos like this:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...68911936,d.b2U

They seem to suggest what I really want is a rotary hammer. That's something I have less of an interest in, but it might be a requirement for my purposes. I'm not sure. Here's one I'm looking at:
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Bosch-1-1...28VC/202204604

I think I need a 1" hole, which will limit what bits I can use and also the bits are limited by the clutch size of the drill/hammer. I'm obviously wading through new waters. We'll see what happens.
Thanks for all the advice.
-naysen

[aclum]

Hi Naysen,

Cool video! Interesting how the drill just breezed through any aggregate in the concrete block. Bodes well for maybe drilling in your difficult "soil" areas.

I think you're right about the drill type you need. I like the one you linked to. It might be possible to rent that model drill and bit (or another brand of rotary hammer drill they carry) from Home Depot to see if it will work out as planned. (In a perfect world, they'd apply some or all of the rental cost to a purchase if you decide to buy one). But, of course, buying and using a brand new drill is a lot more fun and you can drill holes whenever you want .

I can see how you want to get your plants out in the beds and under shade ASAP. If your shade cloth is really hard to handle maybe you can get a grommet kit at Home Depot and either cut your shade cloth down into smaller sections (with new grommets attached), or add the grommets to what you have for more tie down locations to spread the load out among more supports.

Anyway, good luck with things and keep us posted. Hopefully it'll be a little cooler this weekend. I'll be outside working on my shade cloths this weekend too !

Anne

[OkieDan]

Check out Harbor Freight Tools. The bigger the better.

[Worth1]

I have about every tool a man could want including drills.
What I dont have and wont buy is a big hammer drill.
Good ones are costly.
I have used for a living everything from a huge air drill down to the cheap almost worthless battery operated vibrating drills.

Before I will go out and spend the money on something I wont use all of the time I will rent it.

Worth

[z_willus_d]

Worth, words of wisdom that almost matched verbatim that of a well informed peer here at work today. I think I'll look into the rental, which means I need to think through and plan my other four beds.

Anne, across the board, everyone I talk to is concerned about the idea of drilling into the retaining wall blocks. Concerns include: a one-inch carbide bit will shatter those blocks, those blocks will not hold the lever weight of the wall, the blocks will slip, etc. Now, I like the idea, but I'm wondering if I shouldn't just put the stakes down at the ground level at the base of the wall. The problem there is that I'll have stakes that are 2-3' lower at the bottom than the top of my bed. That might not matter in the end, depending on how I finish them off.

Well, I'll try and take some pics to show how things shaped up in the end.

Thanks all for the advice again.
-n

[Stvrob]

Originally Posted by Worth1

......down to the cheap almost worthless battery operated vibrating drills.

Worth

The batteries on my skil cordless drill died some time ago. What I did was threw away the battery pack, took a 10 ft length of old #14 extension cord, took the drill apart and soldered it directly to the underside of the battery contacts, and then put a pair of lugs on the other und of the cord. I attach that to a deep cycle battery and I can work 10 times as long as those silly rechargable batteries it came with.

[z_willus_d]

Hi,

Here are some pics of my shading efforts, and what I've arrived at for this season. In our first pic, we see the very time consuming, expensive, and flimsy PVC option for my patio. This was all to simply shade my corn and cucs in their EarthTainers. It seems like the corn pollen is want to dry up and fizzle/denature in our super hot temps, so I'm hoping the shade helps with this problem.

Pics 35-38 show a better solution, which I arrived at with the help of Anne. I purchased a 10-amp rotational hammer from Harbor Freight (very cheap yet powerful tool) that was well worth the $70 I paid for it. The 1" 18" long carbide bit I bought for it was almost as much at $50. But even with those costs, this solution was less than the PVC and so far it seems to be a much more sturdy option. It also looks a bit better in my opinion, though I will admit that I could have done a better job in measuring the cloth and lining everything up.

The rest of the pics show what I'm doing for the other beds, where I've just thrown up some shade cloth on the tops and partial sides of the tomato cages. This is the lazy man's solution, and I'll probably move to Anne's configuration for these beds sometime before next season. I found that I (or my help) was walking in the beds to put up the curved PVC pipe and cloth, so it will be easier without the cages and large tomato plants in the way. One thing I don't like about this configuration is I don't have an easy way to take down the shade cloth during the off-season. I think it will have far less effect, since the angle of the sun is so low then, but it still would be better if I could easily remove and add back the shading at will.

-naysen

[aclum]

Hey Naysen,

I think it all looks great. So happy things worked out ! You sure made fast work of the project. I'm sure you plants will be a lot happier now (and you too when working out there on a hot day). I'm in the midst of setting up sort of a swamp cooler wanna-be arrangement for my beds right now using Agribon. Will post photos and a a report if it actually works .

Your chicken house and run fit so nicely with your garden - I'm jealous .
Keep us posted on the garden!!

Anne

[BigVanVader]

Just to update my Brandywines are setting fruit now...finally. I actually did the toothbrush trick on them after reading it here. Not sure if that is why they set but either way it wasn't to much trouble and id rather not take the risk.

Btw this forum and all of you guys are pretty gosh darnoodley awesome. Thanks for everything!

[z_willus_d]

Thanks for looking Anne. Keep us posted on your cooler project. You're going to need a solar system to power your cooling system. Maybe we need to encase the tomato plants in miniature bio-domes... that way we can control every aspect of their environment. Produce the worlds best and most artificial tomato plants.
-n

[JamesL]

Nice build out Naysen!

[z_willus_d]

Thanks James. I'm pretty happy with it all so far. I just need that first ripe beefsteak to reenforce that I'm on the right path.

[aclum]

Hi Naysen,

You wrote:
-----------------------
"Maybe we need to encase the tomato plants in miniature bio-domes... that way we can control every aspect of their environment. Produce the worlds best and most artificial tomato plants. "
________________

Hum...... sounds suspiciously like a greenhouse to me ! Maybe I'm really a greenhouse grower at heart who just can't admit the truth . Naw, I love being out in the garden too much for that.

Actually my garden cooler is a very simple concept. Sort of a variant of the DIY swamp coolers using a fan and a "wet wall' as shown in some youtube videos. The "wet wall" in my case is just a wall of damp agribon about 4' x 30' long and the "fan" is just our natural breeze.

I attached some agribon 15 to the chain link fence that runs parallel to and about 3' away from my tomato beds. The material goes from about 1' off the ground (room for the weed wacker at the bottom of the fenceline) to the top of the fence at 5' tall. The fence runs east-west and faces south. A light to moderate breeze generally blows from the south. My plan is to use a 1/4" drip soaker hose at the top of the fence to dribble water down the abribon wall on an intermittent basis to keep the agribon damp on excessively hot days. The breeze coming through the damp material should, in theory, act like a swamp cooler to cool down the main garden a few degrees. Some problems so far - but I think I can get them worked out eventually.... we'll see.....

Anne

[b54red]

Originally Posted by aclum

Hi Naysen,

You wrote:
-----------------------
"Maybe we need to encase the tomato plants in miniature bio-domes... that way we can control every aspect of their environment. Produce the worlds best and most artificial tomato plants. "
________________

Hum...... sounds suspiciously like a greenhouse to me ! Maybe I'm really a greenhouse grower at heart who just can't admit the truth . Naw, I love being out in the garden too much for that.

Actually my garden cooler is a very simple concept. Sort of a variant of the DIY swamp coolers using a fan and a "wet wall' as shown in some youtube videos. The "wet wall" in my case is just a wall of damp agribon about 4' x 30' long and the "fan" is just our natural breeze.

I attached some agribon 15 to the chain link fence that runs parallel to and about 3' away from my tomato beds. The material goes from about 1' off the ground (room for the weed wacker at the bottom of the fenceline) to the top of the fence at 5' tall. The fence runs east-west and faces south. A light to moderate breeze generally blows from the south. My plan is to use a 1/4" drip soaker hose at the top of the fence to dribble water down the abribon wall on an intermittent basis to keep the agribon damp on excessively hot days. The breeze coming through the damp material should, in theory, act like a swamp cooler to cool down the main garden a few degrees. Some problems so far - but I think I can get them worked out eventually.... we'll see.....

Anne

It should help a little especially in your climate. With the low humidity prevalent out there you should get rapid evaporation and therefore some cooling effect. In mine it might be a major problem. I can see it covered in mold and fungus in a day or two. Peanuts are the major cash crop around this neck of the woods but if mold and fungus were valuable we would all be successful farmers down here.

Bill

[Dewayne mater]

Naysen - wow! You got after it and made it happen in a short time. You are really maxing out your space. Impressive!

I haven't ever seen black shade cloth. Mine is white. It doesn't get hot does it? I hope it works as well for you as it does for me. My plants have all picked up significantly with new healthy growth after shade cloth was put up. I'm gonna start a little earlier with it next year to see if some of the reason for my trouble with disease was the plants being stressed by the strong/full sunlight and therefore more susceptible? Just a guess at this point.

Now, if I can find something to keep away the squirrels. They stayed away a long time, but, once they discovered sun gold, they have had in insatiable tomato appetite. Back to picking at blush for me.

DM