As many of you may know, last year, much of the South-Central United States was gripped by a horrific drought & heat wave. For us, it was nearly a month and a half of temperatures over 100F. That’s not pleasant gardening weather.
In that summer, no tomatoes set fruit, and all I really harvested was Cucumbers, lots and lots of Cucumbers. Cucurbits love heat, and we had them coming faster than we could make Cucumber Sandwiches.
November Tomatoes. Take that Nature!
That summer I fought the elements for Tomatoes–and won. I’d like to extend my personal gratitude to the Hornworms of Oklahoma.
They stripped my plants of all foliage just days before the drought began.
Plants lose most of their water through their stomata, tiny pores on the underside of the leave. This transpiration is affective by a number of things including incident light, relative humidity, heat, and the number of leaves.
Now this is going to be a strange thing to say, but I believe that the Hornworms saved my two tomato plants. By stripping the plants of their leaves, the worms effectively shut down their ability to lose water without killing the plant. This greatly reduced the plant’s appetite for water, and in effect placed them into a sort of weird dormancy, allowing the stems to accumulate energy via photosynthesis (Tomatoes do have Chlorophyll in the stems).
Once the heat broke, the plants began a resurgence of growth that ended in two bread-bags bursting full of green Tomatoes. After some shelf ripening, I got to enjoy the sweet, tomatoey taste of victory.
Have you ever fought against all odds in the garden and pulled off an unlikely win? Tell me about it in the comments
Zone Seven Gardening 