That was a crazy night! We normally have pretty high sustained winds around here, it's on the coast, after all, but the gusts usually spell disaster! When I filmed that video my neighbor was looking for her little dog out there and part of the fence had blown down! My dogs won't even go out when it's like that. So the high winds lasted about 45 minutes, we got an inch of rain in about 10 minutes, and then thunder and lightning and a steady slow rain for several hours after that. The silver lining of all this rain lately is no watering the garden in the early morning all week!
The verdict:
Sunflowers are simply amazing, still tall this morning
This is certainly not what I expected. My Orange Wellington tomatoes are in a container that is massive, sized for a tree, and very heavy. Definitely a W-T-H? moment!
Below are the tomatoes I was concerned about, the UFO's, especially since they stick 8-9 feet into the air and I haven't saved seed yet.
So my ridiculously unstable PVC experiment was a huge success! I kind of had the feeling it would be, since I had tried everything else previously. Last year I had super strong fencepost Florida Weaves going on and they effectively created a brick wall for wind, shredding the tomatoes during Hurricane Season. This year I opted for this floppy mess of a system, the PVC is literally jammed in the corners without rebar and simply tied together with twine at the top! The PVC flexed and swung back an forth in the wind but the vines were so spread out the air flew right in between the whole thing!
A branch of Quadrato Peppers was found about 30 feet from the plant, now I guess I'll get green peppers instead of red!
It actually gets much worse here in the fall, with the strongest hurricanes and tropical storms typically arriving in October, then in November the Nor'easters start arriving. My fall plants are so much closer to the ground then that it isn't as devastating. This is the reason I can't do hoophouses or tunnels here, the winds are too much. I learned my lesson after losing a bunch of money in PVC, rebar, and plastic 2 years ago!
On a high note yesterday was the 2 loaves of bread I got baked, sliced and frozen. I could have done another 1-2 loaves, but want to make sure this particular recipe thaws well. I have a feeling that getting the right recipe will be a big learning curve.
Now I need to get a weekly kinderGARDENS post together, that has been a challenge this year with the heat!
