At the time, I was so discouraged by signs of late blight and other disease, I didn't see any reason to re-tie the plants. But with the break in the heat, I've noticed some new flowers and new fruit setting, even a new Kellogg's Breakfast fruit, and I thought for sure when I picked the one that made this evening's dinner, it was the end of the road for that vine.
My Paul Robeson and Limony vines are nine feet tall if they're an inch. Amazing, these indeterminate varieties. My neighbors quizzed me about why my stakes were so tall when I used eight-foot 2x2s. I should have just told them I couldn't find any twelve-footers.
So I spent an hour or more untangling vines from each other where they'd blown into each other and then grown together; trussing them up against their stakes. The way it's blowing out there as I write, for all I know every damned one of them may be blown over on its stake, but I did what I could.
It got very dark and very cool as I was attempting to harvest a few Thai peppers (the birds seem to have discovered that plant, the peppers grow pointed up out of the foliage; but I can't begrudge the birds much, they've taken it easy on my maters for the most part, and I've harvested about as much capsicum as I'm liable to use in the coming year from just my Kung Pao plant alone, and there's a half dozen habaneros I've spotted on that little plant).
So cue the REO Speedwagon as I beat a hasty retreat from the first fat drops to fall out of a sky gone black at 7:30.
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