Tracydr: I also started some Aji Dulce, and I think saying they are a "booger" to germinate is a nice way of putting it! They are also painfully slow growing, certainly the furthest behind in my garden. I'm real curious about how they will taste, though! For the OP: if your containers are black/dark, you could get some cheap white paint and paint the outsides of the containers white. (Even just some white acrylic craft paint will work.) That will help reduce the temperture in the soil a bit. Also, like the burlap idea, you could get some shade cloth to put up to cool your concrete yard. In comes in percentage of shade it produces, and 30% seems to not prevent growth or fruit ripening on my small fruit plants. I get mine from Grower's Supply/Farmtek cheap by buying remnants of about the size I want. Cheers! Here is a link that might be useful: Shade Cloth Remnants

Having trouble visualizing this. Regardless of shape I would divide this 3 foot wide bed into 3 'rows' of 1 ft each spanning the bed. In the southern most row would go basil, next bush tomatos and last the trellis with cukes. Run the trellis from east to west for maximum light/minimum shading.

raitch, I made your tag red because I am seeing red this summer - squirrels!!!! Those monsters decimated my corn plants when they were only 4 feet tall and not a cob in sight! They came back and snatched approximately 80-90% of my raw green tomatoes most of the toms were small about the size of golf/tennis balls. I got really upset because I have a relatively small garden mostly in containers. I tried red hot pepper wax spray and it worked for about 3-4 days but during that time the squirrels bit into more and more tomatoes looking for some without pepper. I made a brew of water, 1/2 cup powdered red hot pepper and 1/2 cup red pepper flakes -- I put this in a small pot and simmered it for about 30 minutes and then added 1 teaspoon of canola oil. I let the mixture cool and strained it into my pump sprayer with a double dose of spreader sticker (Coco-wet) in gallon water. I sprayed this on everything. I also got large wood rat traps. I was still upset so went to farm store and got bobcat urine. Another gardener told me fox urine worked for him so I got some of that also. I put the urine in an old ketchup bottle and sprinkled it on the ground, fence ledge, fence post and all wood which squirrels use to 'run'. So far so good. You can not put the urine on your plants or in the pot with your plants but you can sprinkle it around the area. It stinks but after an hour you can not smell it anymore -BUT- the squirrels smell it. BTW - I only put the rat traps out when I could monitor them - did not want to catch any neighbor's cats. Did it work?? Let us just say that for the past 2 weeks squirrels don't live here anymore. I'm generally an animal lover - I leave them be as long as they leave me alone - but this was just too much. Dollar store has red pepper powder - don't get the more expensive stuff from your grocer. DL

Olpaka, is a good choice, I've had some cracking with Cherokee Purple, but sounds like you may do ok with all the mulch and irrigation, which helps. I've had very good luck with Bonnie Best. In fact I'm still picking tomatoes from it now. I planted it April first and got a good crop till june and july when the temps were over 100 everyday, but when the monsoons came and temps got back into the 90's it started blooming and now has another large crop about ready to harvest. It is good all purpose canning and fresh eating.