I've gotten a lot of vegetative growth in the past week or so from most everything except for the strawberries which I transplanted late from nursery pots grown in soil. I wasn't expecting much from them and they haven't done much, but they haven't died either so I'm going to just let them keep going and see what happens.
The zucchini has a lone fruit and a lot of blooms so I'm expecting a lot more. I had been plucking off the blooms until it put on more growth, but it's quite large now so I'm going to just let it do its thing and see what happens. My two bush bean vines are doing well and starting to put out several beans. I wish my tomato plants were farther along, but they are finally starting to put out some significant growth now, so I'm hoping that in a month or so I should start getting fruit from them before it gets too awful hot. My pepper plants are also much smaller than I'd like, but they too are just starting to take off so we'll see how that goes.
The challenge will be to get some vegetables before 100+ temps get here in July and August. I think I will order another shade tarp so I can knock the sun down by about 50% or so. I can't really do anything about the ambient temps since everything is open, but I'm hoping that if I block enough of the sun I can keep producing even during those months. Even if I can just keep everything alive, hopefully I can get a good harvest in the fall.
My long term plans are to get this hydroponic thing figured out so that I can eventually build a greenhouse and with shading, ventilation, and an evaporative cooler in the summer and perhaps some sort of heat supplement I can grow year round with enough production to satisfy all of my vegetable needs for the wife and I without having to do much canning.
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