Washington update It's Summertime!
- Subject: Washington update It's Summertime!
- From: M* C*
- Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1999 14:21:04 -0700
Summer has finally arrived in the Pacific Northwet. The plants are
responding to the warm weather as expected and getting crisped. Someone
pass the sunscreen. We had a couple days in the 90's this past weekend
just in time for the first females to be pollinated. We'll see how that
went. I'm now pollinating every day. The first plant that had a female
ready was the smallest, that is the 916 LaRue 97 and it was with a nice 5
lobe female pollinated at 10 feet out
on the main vine on July 7. The plants are almost 2 weeks behind where they
were last year. It may all even out though as
I lost all the fruit I set early last year. Many females daily now on all
three plants. Pollinated three on the 769 Mettler this am, a couple more on
the LaRue and 5 on the Mombert. There are so many females ready I only am
using two to three males for each one. As for the leaf burn there isn't
much I could do about it. When you go from constant daytime highs in the
60's with a lot of cloud cover to bright sunshine and 90's with no
transition the plants don't handle it well. The one that suffered the most
was the 759 Mombert 97. This plant is so large though I don't think it will
matter much in the long run.
One question I have for other list members regards vine pruning. The
Mombert plant is a very aggressive grower with large leaves on the main
every foot or less. With secondaries coming off at these junctions and
leaves getting close to two feet across it is very crowded the secondaries
are crowding each other quite a bit and I'm pinching all tertiaries when
they are quite small. Would I be losing much by pruning off some of these
secondaries? There is no way I will be able to set fruit on all of them as
they would be growing on top of each other in no time. What is the best
approach to this? Should I cut every other one? Wait until fruit are set
and determine which ones I'll keep and remove the secondaries on either
side? Or perhaps just terminate some of them at the point where the begin
to get in the way or too crowded and bury the ends? I have secondaries
already at 15' and they are reaching the boundaries of my plot. Letting
them grow into my neighbors plot
or out onto the lawn is not an option. I grow my plants in a county
pea-patch garden. I thought driving 9 miles each way to my garden was a
nuisance until I hear some of the other stories lately.
With the arrival of the warmer weather the patch has kept me very busy
lately. It's been a real challenge keeping up with vine burying, pruning,
pollinating and watering. But the more time I spend working in the patch
the more optimistic I become about the prospects this year. Even though we
went through a prolonged cool spring we haven't had to deal with extreme
heat, thunderstorms with hail and damaging winds, vine borers, or cucumber
beetles (yet). I just hope that I'll be able to make some selections as to
which fruit I will keep on the plants prior to my vacation that starts the
22nd. I was disappointed to here that Nic will be away as my destination is
just a few miles from him in Ohio. I'll be unsubscribing for the period I
am away and will check the archives when I return. Keep them growing
everyone.
Chris Michalec
Covington, WA
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