Planted one pepper, and it is struggling. I heard this was the third hottest June on record, and July seems warmer than usual too. Maybe we'll get a break before August, September and October heat set in.

We had that last week... up here in Sac... miserable, huh!

My tomatoes look good however the foilage leaves something to be desired! I have been watering more also. Some of my roses have been fried! But the roots are wet down every morning. Rough time for the plants.

For the Pepper, and tomato growers, due to the hot weather that may cause irregular watering. You may develope Blossom End Rot, I seen it on my Roma Tomatoes.

I'm probably watering too much - everything is lush and green - no tomatoes setting fruit (no doubt because it's too hot). My brother in Burbank complains that he isn't getting tomatoes either - I guess either we put them in too late or it got hot too soon.
Amaranth is growing well, squash foliage wilts during the blast-furnace days but springs back overnight and are producing lots of squash every day. Beans are blooming, cowpeas are growing well but no blooms or pods yet. A volunteer soybean has made a nice little bush, no pods yet on that one either. I am picking cucumbers and spotted a softball sized watermelon.
Tony Kienitz (The Year I Ate My Yard) says July and August are the "dormant" months of gardening in SoCal - too hot to do anything but go on vacation.

Everything is sort of ok- plants look alright (except some spider mite damage), but there's no fruit setting on my eggplants or tomatillos, which surprizes me. The tomatoes (cherry and better boy) and the peppers are setting just fine, with the help of some shade cloth over them. I'm still picking swiss chard that I planted in February, and the herbs are going crazy- basil, parsley, sage, rosemary, cilantro, oregano. I water with a combination of drip and soaker hose, at least every other day for two hours. It's way to hot to do much more than watch the lizards play from my living room window. I always think of the REM song from the 80's about gardening at night, which is kind of nice, actually.
hm

It's gotten into the 80s here, but not above 90 - still at least 10° warmer than normal, and we didn't get our usual June fog. Still, my tomatoes are doing well, and I also have baby lettuce and arugula that are doing better than I expected. For some reason, basil is not getting as big as I would like. Pepper plants are doing fine. I have a tamarind tree that is growing from seed, but I'm not sure what I'll end up doing with it.

Lars