Hi Danny

Welcome to the Florida forum!

First it will help to know your zone to give you advice. Considering it is your first garden you had some success with the vegetables that you harvested, this year we had a warm winter and that made the bugs and disease arrived earlier.
In my zone 9b the cucumbers and zucchini plants are all out after a good harvest, tomatoes are still producing but soon I will be cleaning the garden and take them out.
It is time to plant the summer crops that can take the heat, the rains and the humidity.

Silvia

thanx for the reply... im in Tampa florida (not sure what zone...
since the first small harvest, my tomatoe plants have over doubled in size... Im literally shocked... I was starting to regret using 8ft stakes/poles to tie them to cause it looked funny when they were short... but now the beefstakes have reached the top of the poles (about 6.5ft off the ground)

i currently have about 3 large beefstake tomatoes im hoping change red soon and about a dozen romas that are almost full size, but green, plus about a dozen cherry tomatoes that are changing...

its just the cucumbers and squash/zuccs thats look horrible...
is it just the hot weather getting to them?
should I just rip them out completely and plant something else?
I dont have a lot of room to plant, and want things that produce a lot (not things like lettuce and such) I mainly choose tomatoes cause I have a 3 and 4 yr old and they like them...
I also planted (in a pot) some snap peas hoping they do well for the kids to pick....
what do you recommend, what types of vegis should I plant this time of year? the location gets direct sun from about 10-3/4 and then sun through a pool screen till sun down...
thanx again for the info and help
-Danny

Danny did you read the FAQ under Florida Gardening for Beginners? It gives links to the extension service where growing dates and varieties for each vegetable are listed. Some things will grow now...but not the things you are probably expecting. Good luck!

Danny - That is good about your tomatoes and hope that you get a good harvest. In the fall, you can plant tomatoes again.
About the squash and cucumbers not only disease is the problem but also the pickle worm that arrived earlier in May this season, and once the fungal disease sets on there are no sprays good enough to attack them. Sprays work more as a preventive than a cure. And you can also plant those veggies in the fall.
Depending on what your family will eat you can plant summer crops, mostly they are southern crops that will grow at this time like butterbeans, southern peas, okra,eggplant, sweet potatoes, peanuts and few others...
I do get a lot of things in the summer from established plantings, I am harvesting winter squash, eggplants, bananas, avocados,blackberries, still have tomatoes, collards, kale and pole beans.
Summer is a good time to get seeds, clean the beds and make plans for the fall.

Silvia

awesome thanx for all the great advice...

It sounds like I should just get rid of the squash/zuccs then...
Question, How long should I wait,and is there anything I should do to the garden box (after removing the squash/zuccs) before I start planting some summer crops?

thanx again for all the great advice... I I will check out the FAQs later today...
-Danny

Danny, after harvesting and getting rid of sick plants I always amend the soil to grow new crops, the beds in sandy Florida soil need organic material, and there is no need to wait. Butterbeans and southern peas are easy to grow, check how tall they grow before planting them, sweet potatoes are also easy to root and grow, eggplant and okra can go in containers.

Silvia

no need to worry about the sandy soil here... I filled my garden box with about 20-25 bags of miracle grow/potting mix :) ...
man that was an expensive start, but considering my towering 7ft tomato plants... I guess it was worth it...

would it be helpful if I made a structure over the garden using pool screen to filter some of the sun during midday?
thanx
Danny

Danny, eventually all the good soil gets used up by the sun, rain and elements, we all have to keep adding. I usually use black cow and/or peat moss and organic fertilizers according to the veggie needs. Sweet potatoes and southern peas don't need rich soil.

And yes, it will help to add a sunscreen of some sort. I grew tomatoes in Phoenix, Arizona and had shade cloth on top of the raised bed. Now I have all my big variety tomatoes in morning sun, afternoon shade and the ones that did not look too well, I put a lightweight row cover. If you have fruit already, they will ripen but when it gets too hot the flowers don't set.

Here is a picture of my last harvest in June...

{{gwi:84217}}

Silvia

Danny, I forgot to say that the picture is June of last year and this is from July last year for you to browse...

Silvia

Here is a link that might be useful: July

Danny,
I read on here once that tomatoes need night-time temperatures of 74 or below in order to set fruit. That's why people can grow tomatoes in the summer in Virginia, when their summer is hotter during the day than ours is in Miami. They get the cooler summer nights that we never get.
For the same reason, I leave my tomatoes in the ground for a few weeks, even after I'm pretty sure they're done, just in case we get a weird cold snap. This year that worked and even though it was such a mild winter and warm April, we had just enough chill one week in early May to extend my harvest.
All the way down here, I can't grow most of what Sylvia does in the summer - and the rest we simply don't eat. My solution is to let the weeds take the garden and then spread compost, lay newspaper and mulch over the compost and the weeds in late July. By October, when I'm ready to plant down here, all that organic stuff has decomposed and created nice rich dirt. It took a couple years before I started seeing results. When I started, I had four inches of dirt before you got to white sand. Now I have 18 inches of dirt in some areas. And my yields are higher than they used to be.
Good luck!