Now that the unusually intense and fierce summer heat seems to be behind us (we had more than two months with high temps around 105-110F!), it's worth looking back on mitigation strategies. I ended up having to water (maybe half an inch) almost every day, in order to avoid serious wilting. Once or twice I had to water TWICE a day. Whew! My impression was that may have been less to put water in the soil and more to just cool off the plants. My soil is deep and friable. I throw a couple inches of mulch around all of the plants regularly. I try to avoid overwatering young plants to encourage roots to go deep. In addition, I had thick shade cloth over young plants, because direct sun in this heat is deadly for them. Now, I hear about people who see these conditions doing watering only every few days, and I wonder how they get away with that. The heat is only going to get worse, so some discussion is in order. Maybe people have come up with some good strategies for vegetable gardening. .