I'm in Sacramento too. Our heat is intermittent, so just keep your plants growing and flowering. They may not set fruit during the heat spells, but if you have more flowers comming when it cools off, you'll get plenty of veggies. Just remember that we're very close to some of the best tomato production areas in the world. It's a good place to grow tomatoes. Eggplants and Peppers seem more shallow-rooted than tomatoes. They love the heat, but they do best with slightly more frequent water (and plenty of mulch). Here is a link that might be useful: My blog

70-75 is a good germination temp for most things but it needs to be consistent until they sprout. They may still sprout eventually but it will take much longer and you risk the seeds rotting without that consistent soil temperature. All you can do is give it a try. ;) Dave

Nice pad, estreya! Anyway, I'm gonna go out on a limb and give you a little word of caution... all compost is NOT created equal. Do you know what this compost was made from? It looks like possibly wood shavings and some kind of manure. That's fine for compost that has been completely digested and cured. But I'm looking at what appears to be a significant amount of uncomposted wood fibers. Tilling this into the soil MAY cause problems (or may not... that's the thing about unfinished compost - you never know for sure what the final product will be or how long it will take to get there). It's tempting to think that manure, with a low C:N ratio and wood shavings, with a high C:N ratio, would balance out into a nice happy mix. And in the long run they will. But in the short term, nitrogen levels can swing wildly. A worst case scenario would be that the high initial ammonia content burns existing plants, but then the nitrogen levels drop rapidly next spring and now you are nitrogen deficient. OTOH, a best case scenario is that the nitrogen stays put long enough for the wood to decompose and everything grows wonderfully. Probably the safest thing to do is to use it as a mulch instead of tilling it in. If you feel compelled to till it in, then just keep an eye on plant growth and see how they respond. If you're tilling this in for a garden next year, then burning won't be a problem. Watch instead for possible nitrogen depletion, and have a bag of blood meal or something like that on hand in case things look poosley. And don't worry - in the long run it will be fine. It will probably be fine in the short run too, but just be watchful. -Diggity

The usual way to raise humidity for outside plants is to try to create a humid "microclimate" around the plants by grouping them together and keeping the soil very wet with standing water in the tray system under the plants. I have heard of elaborate solutions such as misting systems (which can be made pretty easily with a suspended soaker hose) above plants and of course the ultimate solution is the greenhouse. In an outside bog garden, maybe try to make a low part with a standing water "pond" in it to group plants around.