Most garden tomato plants didn’t yield much of a bounty in the heat just prior to the daily rains that began the first week of August.

The late July drop off in tomatoes was normal one; it was too hot.

Heat caused two problems: First, tomato pollen is sterilized by extremely high temperature. Those mid-90s of June and the first half of July make for some nice tomatoes. But when the daily highs get on up there just under a hundred degrees, many plant species’ pollen gets weakened to the infertile point. Plus plants are dealing with the stress of very hot weather that requires extra effort to keep their interiors cool enough for all the goings on in plants.

And although weeks of August clouds cooled things down a bit, those clouds themselves served up yet another stress; a shortage of sunshine bright enough for full-fledged photosynthesis. Whether plant stress results from clouds, heat, insects, disease or drought, plants tend to prioritize survival ahead of the reproductive phases of blooming, pollination and making seeds.

The good news for folks with fruitless tomato plants that are green and growthy from all the rain is things ought to be getting right again pretty soon. As skies clear and daily high temperatures inch downward a tad, plants set out in spring should go back to making and keep it up until frost.

OK, you won’t be picking braggart-size tomatoes, but you won’t have trouble finding friends to accept September tomatoes of any size.

Not all plant types or even all species within the same family react the same to the same stresses. Like tomatoes, cotton will abort reproductive efforts with just a few days of heavy cloud cover.

Cotton farmers and their consortium of agronomists and entomologists report regularly to one another on the “square shed” in reference to the plants dropping off the pre-bloom structures in response to too many cloudy days.

Cotton loves day after day of lots of sun with exceptions for the right amount of rain days.

And cotton does respond favorably to heat, but only up to a point, that point being somewhere in the mid-nineties. At 96, seven or so, even cotton feels the heat stress and slows down converting flowers to bolls.

What’s odd but not at all rare in the plant world is the okra growing right next to tomatoes. Okra is a close kin of cotton and just seems to ignore clouds and high heat. I don’t know that anyone ever told me their okra shut it down during prolonged cloudy spells or extra hot spells. Of course even tough okra can get too thirsty, but veteran gardeners know there is just one sure thing that causes okra to stop making before cold kills it.  If okra is not harvested every few days, the plants will just stop making new pods as long as the old ones are left on. I suppose the okra plant feels it has met its only true obligation which is seed production.

 

Terry Rector is a spokesman for the Warren County Soil and Water Conservation District.