I just came back from my garden inspection and only can sigh… Nothing is doing well. Cold and very wet spell followed by very hot spell didn’t do any good. It seems that tomatoes already got early blight, despite Serenade spraying I was only able to apply when rain finally stopped. I pick affected leaves every day, and new ones get affected next day. Half of the peppers yellowed, dropped most of the leaves and their fruit got rotten. I am not sure if it is stress of hot roots or fungal wilt… Grey mold thrives on strawberries. Brown spots on melon leaves. Thanks to the cold, they have so few leaves I can’t even remove the spotted ones. One watermelon just wilted, other two do not grow. And everything (even weeds) just look yellowish, despite it all was fertilized at proper time. On the bright side, I may be able to take a real vacation this summer and go somewhere , as I wouldn’t have much to care about soon… sigh.
Sorry Galina.
We are in a blight zone. One approach I use if the blight gets ahead of me is to get the plants to ‘grow past it’. I use soluable seaweed-based fertilizer and either foliar or soil drench or both. Then, if you look where you pruned off a blighted branch, a new healthy one comes in the crotch which is not blighted. Just something to try.
Yes, doing the same… Will see.
Cucumbers are having a rough start. Rain washes away slug killer and they get on them. Same with squash. Tomatoes are looking healthy and starting to grow. It’s going to be a late crop for everything. Sugar snap peas are starting to crop so I hope the heat lays off. And we get more mild weather and no rain. Corns coming up, blueberries are looking good, strawberries seem fine. I had to cut down a whole apple tree and dispose of it. The whole tree was browning up. Not sure if fire light, but thought it better to get rid of.
I have some good liquid fert (Medina Hasta Grow), it did wonders for my plants in cups. I plan on using it on my newly transplanted tom’s and peppers when they start setting fruit.
If I go the foliar route, when is the best time to spray them? In the morn or evening? I have heard that during the heat of the day, the leaves won’t absorb because the pores or stomata or whatever, close up?
I’m late planting things this year. I did so purposely so the harvest time wouldn’t be at the same time as when I’m on vacation. Most everything seem to be doing well. Tomato plants are growing fast. Peppers sat there for a while but finally showing new growth. Zucchini shows no signs of wilting yet, as in the past. Cucumbers, butternut and part of watermelon only have few true leaves. Hopefully this warm weather will get them going. Harvested some of the kohlrabi. Never even got to try the lettuce. I think squirrels get to them before me. Yes you read it right. Squirrels, not rabbits. Had bad luck with direct sawing beans. Pillbugs ate the seeds. Then tried containers. It got covered with a tarp and all the seedlings got cooked underneath it. It was 90 plus probably didn’t take long. Bummer. Just started the third batch. If something happens to this I’m giving up! All in all can’t complain though 
I usually do it in the evening before dark. If there is some breeze then I wait til early the next morning since there is normally no breeze early AM…and it is such a pleasant time to be out. 
Galina,
The tomato plants you gave me have done so well in pots until yesterday when the heat hit. They look stressed. Leaves are curled. Fortunately, only two days of high heat.
My watermelon seedlings, just planted, did not survive.
Slugs have been an issue this spring. I’m applying sluggo daily it seems. But on a positive note, it was a great spring for transplanting trees and shrubs.
We’ve been eating the early yellow tomatoes and had our first red bell this evening in Japchae (stirfry). This is the earliest I’ve gotten red bells. Garlic and onions will be pulled in about 2 weeks. Birds descended on my first sowing of beans - hastily put up wire hoops and bird net and sowed in a few empty spaces - think they’ll do OK. Potatoes are doing well. Yacon looks the healthiest of all. Cukes and watermelon coming along ~5’ of vine. Brassicas baby plants were eat up by the army worm - I have a net over them but these rascals come up out of the ground. You can see their little tunnels. THAT is a huge challange, but I wanna learn how to grow them over the summer 'cause we like & eat a lot of them. Gonna use a 40% aluminet and see how that goes. Love to experiment.
More Midwest than northeast here (though I was born and raised in New England)
Lettuce, chard, peas all consumed by rabbits.
They even ate all the leaves off of a tomato seedling
I am trying that hugelkulture (wood mounds) and my (other) tomato transplants are going like gangbusters and I will have cherry (yellow pear actually) tomatoes ripe before July 1st. Summer squash plants are also liking the conditions.
Watering is weird because for the first few minutes water just rolls off the mounds, but once it starts soaking in, it never pools as there is plenty of spongy material below to hold it. Plants at the top haven’t seemed water stressed once, on the sides they have seemed stressed.
Scott (Michigan)
Midwest again. We had many days of hot weather around 95 and no rains. Luckily my veggie garden is on drip irrigation. It helps A LOT. Everything love heat. Tomatoes grew huge and set many small tomatoes, no blight yet. Even lettuce is still growing, spinach almost gone, have huge green leaves on onions. Beans, edamame, melons, watermelons, okra, squash, potatoes all growing nicely. Peppers were not very happy for some time, but in the last two weeks they greened up and started to grow. When it was cold in May I also thought that I won’t have much vegetables this summer but it seems like I was wrong, so more work to me, sigh…
The problem with our weather is crazy jumps from like 45 and rain for 5 days to 95. Today is third day in a row of hot weather. Some green gooseberries “boiled” right on the bush, beans leaves got cooked. And soil is still very wet from all the rain we had, so nothing to help them with… I shaded peppers, but it is only piece of shade fabric I have, no way to cover everything…
NE KY here. Because of late frosts and cool damp weather in May, we just got everything planted out over the last week or so. It’s a been hot for the last week, temps hitting 90 for a few days, including today. But about 1pm, we had a heavy line is storms roll through, and dumped about 3/4" of rain in about a half hour. It’s raining again, but not as hard as earlier today. We actually needed some rain. Total for today was eight tenths. A half inch is possible tomorrow.
I was actually typing this and the power went out! It just came back on after 4 hours.
Beans, cukes, some corn and lettuce have just now sprouted, we had to replant our seed potatoes, as the first batch got inundated with about 7" of rain in a week, and rotted. We replanted some Kennebec and Red Pontiac last weekend. All the tomatoes and some peppers have been transplanted, and are doing well.
I tried starting lettuce in the fall and overwintering it under a plastic row cover and it worked out very well (zone 6b near Rochester, NY). Once winter hit, It didn’t grow at all, but it survived the winter very well, and the head start allowed it to start growing immediately in the early spring. I’ve been eating a lot of salads this spring. Lettuce seems to love this cool wet weather. It’s just now starting to bolt, but the spring planted lettuce is almost ready for a second crop.
Garlic and potato onions are doing well.
Strawberries were tightly tented under light floating row covers once the flowers dropped petals and I was sure they were pollinated, so that has helped a bit to protect them from squirrels, and helps the sluggo last longer.
I also put the sluggo in little piles under scrap pieces of lumber, or other little things, like overturned pots, to protect it from the rain.
I start seeds in a little greenhouse tent and transplanted on the late side this year due to the cool, wet spring. Tomatoes are about 3 weeks behind schedule but healthy.
anything requiring direct seeding in the garden is way behind. cucumbers, pole beans, and squash are still seedlings at this point.