All the veggies you mentioned need at least a half day of sun to produce. More sun is even better. Down here in the south some afternoon shade is appreciated by the plants. I'm not sure how that works up your way. How hot does it get there?

I plant both ways with good results. One of the problems I have is wind. Most often, because I live in a valley the strong winds come from the north or south. I use a trellis system for support and the trellises that run east to west catch more wind, and if the ground is soft from rain there seems to be a greater chance for damage, but not enough to lose sleep over.

Zackey, I am near Tulsa, and late summer is very hot, sometimes 100+, I shaded the tomatoes in August last summer and have successfully grown them on the east side of the house. Larry, I had not thought about wind. I'm not sure of prevailing wind in my yard, (My house is north of the garden.). Seems like storms usually come from the northwest.

Wow! Amy, I didn't think tomatoes would grow in so much heat. Do you get fruit when it's that hot? My husband puts a heavy homemade cage around our tomatoes. Nothing could blow them down. The bad thing it's hard for Miss Short Arms to get to the tomatoes that grow deep inside the cage.

Amy,

Currently, my rows run east-west, with raised beds that are 4' or 5' wide by 35' to 50' long, depending on what part of the garden we're talking about. I plant double rows in each raised bed, with the 2 rows offset from one another so that the tomato plants are not sitting there in evenly matched pairs. I get enormous numbers of tomatoes and whether a plant is shaded by a row that sits to its south or north seems to be immaterial.

I have grown them every which way since we moved here---in single rows, in double rows, widely spaced, spaced in double rows as matched pairs, spaced in double rows offset from one another, and even in large circles a la' Japanese tomato ring style. I've grown them in full sun from sunrise to sunset, and I've grown them in full sun from sunrise to 1 p.m., at which time they become shaded by the pecan tree to their west when I plant them at the west end of the garden. I've grown them in the back yard where the house and trees shade them until about 10 a.m., and then they get full sun until about 5 p.m., and then are in dappled shade after that. Guess what ? They grew just fine and produced just fine no matter how I spaced them or placed them. So, don't overthink it because you are likely to get a great crop no matter which way the rows run.

With our high temperatures and intense sunlight that persist for months on end some years, tomato plants actually benefit from some shade during the worst part of the summer, which in my garden usually is from mid-July through mid-August.

In a hot dry year like 2011, 2012 and 2013, I usually erect shade cloth (40% or 50%) during the hottest time to protect the plants a bit from the heat. In 2014, when we had cooler temperatures and decent rainfall (still in drought, but rain did fall in the summer months), I didn't bother with shade cloth.

I grow my plants in individual cages firmly staked, using both wooden stakes and green metal t-posts and don't have much trouble with the wind. An occasional thunderstorm with wind gusts 50 mph and above may temporarily have the caged tomato plants leaning this way or that, but they don't topple over onto the ground.

I always use my taller plants, like tomatoes, corn and okra, to shade shorter plants (like peppers, green beans, peas, etc.) that benefit from being in dappled shade for at least part of the day. Here in OK with our high temperatures, full sun all day long is almost too much----and in a very dry year, it really is too much and I use lots of shading strategies to get the plants less sun, not more sun.

So, unless you have man-made shade from nearby structures, wooden privacy fences, a neighbor's trees, etc., run the rows however you wish. I think you'll get great yields regardless. I experimented for years to see how much shade was too much in that it caused the yields to drop, and found I get great harvests as long as the plants get 6 hours of direct sun. I get pretty good harvests even from tomato plants that only get 4-5 hours of direct sun.

My permanent raised beds all run east-west with the long sides being the north and south sides and that works best for me, but I cannot really say the plants did not produce well when I had beds that ran north-south with the east and west sides being the long sides. I got good production from those too.

Because our property is a creek hollow with forests on three sides, I get a decent amount of wind protection, so can run trellises both ways without much trouble. Unlike Larry, I rarely have to worry about trellises blowing over in wet soil because we just are not blessed with the large amounts of rainfall that he routinely receives.

I had beds that ran both ways for a while----more like a potager garden than a row garden, but as the drought years became increasingly more common, I got tired of having to run drip irrigation lines both east-west and north-south so changed all the beds to run east-west. Because of the slope of our property and garden, that was the best way to run the beds for even irrigation.

So, work with your land and its own characteristics. You may not figure out what works best for a few years because you'll need to discover what works best for you in the very rainy years and in the very dry years. I had to do tons of soil improvement for over a decade before I felt comfortable with running all the beds north-south. Prior to that, rainfall still ran off too quickly without being absorbed, so I needed beds running both ways to slow down the runoff. Now that the soil has been through 16 years of amending and improving, rain soaks in much better and is absorbed quickly, so I no longer had to have beds running both ways to slow down the flow of the runoff.

Zackey, Sadly, we can get really hot here but it is highly variable. Still, depending on where you are in Oklahoma, you may have to deal with high temperatures over 100 degrees for most to all of July and August some years. Some folks in western OK sometimes start hitting the 100s in June (or even in May). Some years (and this was one for much of the state) are relatively cool, with fewer days than usual with high temperatures of 100 or over.

We get the best tomato harvests here when we plant early enough to beat the heat. I am sure y'all experience the same thing in Georgia where the temperatures get high enough to cause blossom drop on your tomato plants at some point every summer. In an average year, that happens in my garden around the third week in June. In a very hot year like 2011, we had high temps hot enough to impede fruit set on tomato plants beginning the first week in May. In a very cool year, we might not get temperatures that hot until August. So, you never really know what to expect, but generally we don't get the same weather two summers in a row.

I try to get my tomato plants in the ground in early March, so that we start getting the first ripe tomatoes in late April. If I do that successfully, then by mid-June, we are in full-fledged tomato canning mode and, by the time it is getting insanely hot in July, all the canning is done and all we need is to get enough tomatoes in the worst heat to ensure we have fresh ones for eating. Unfortunately, for 7 of the last 8 years, we have had our last freezing temperature arrive very late at our house in southern OK in May, usually on May 3rd or 4th. (My average last frost date is March 28th.) So, we have to plant early to beat the heat but also be prepared to cover up the plants on a late cold night or two (or 10 or 12) even after we're already harvesting ripe tomatoes. It is crazy. I never would attempt planting tomatoes so early here nowadays without the use of floating row cover to protect them on those occasional exceptionally late freezing nights. Our spring weather has become increasingly erratic since around 2005.

I wouldn't think our heat would be very different from Georgia''s, but then again.....I grew up in Texas only 80 miles south of where I now live in Oklahoma, and we thought a really hot day was 105 degrees. Only very, very rarely would we have high temperatures higher than that. In our first year here in southern OK, we had a week in August where it was 108 or higher every day, and I think we hit 111 two days in a row. In 2011, which was hotter and drier than normal, we hit 115 and 116 a few times. It was a miserable year for the tomato plants....and everything else, including animals and people as well as plants. We just learn to go with the flow......

Dawn

Zackey, as Dawn said, we lose production in the heat, but they wll come back for a bit in the fall. Some people start tomatoes in June or July to put out for fall producton when the spring plants are ragged. But mine recovered and had a pretty good crop of green tomatoes (many I didn't see tlll AFTER the freeze.) Variety matters, too. Arkansas Traveler produced consistently (though not prolifically)for me all summer and tried to put on blossoms in the green house until we had some real bad weather that froze it. Everyone here has varieties they feel grow well in our weird weather, and of course, saving seeds of the ones that do best helps them adjust to the climate.

Thanks , Dawn, I had actually kind of settled on a zig zag pattern in the bed like you described...just depends if new beds get soil early enough whether they will run N/S or E/W. I din't think green beans needed shade, but I suppose they are subject to blossom drop, too.

Many, MANY, years ago, when I was still single and driving a 1960 Rambler station wagon, I drove past the bank's temperature sign that read 115 degrees. I said "With God as my witness, I will never have a car without airconditioning again". Ha, back in those days A/C wasn't standard. There were always those weeks when I was a kid when we would steal eggs from the fridge to watch them fry on the sidewalk.

Amy here is some good info for you. Go to the website below and choose your county. After you click your county look for "Detailed Climate Information (PDF format)" in blue letters on that page. After you click that link, move down the page until you see a Wind Rose under the paragraph "Winds". This will give you a good idea of the prevailing winds in your area.

Here is a link that might be useful: Oklahoma Climate Details

I have one garden which receives late afternoon shade on account of trees. Some things have done a lot better there than in my main garden. Barksdale Wax Pole bean, for instance, doesn't like our Oklahoma heat and sometimes will barely set pods. But this year, with afternoon shade and a milder summer, it did great.

Baker Family Heirloom (tomato) has lots of leaf cover and sets well for me, except during the hottest part of the hottest summers. But even then, it picks up production soon as temps moderate. It did so great this last summer that my wife is lobbying that I only plant that variety!

Zackey, welcome to the forum!

George
Tahlequah, OK

Amy, The use of the term zig zag is absolutely perfect because that is how they are planted.

I had a car without air conditioning in 1980 when our part of Texas had the killer heat wave that lasted all summer and was very similar to 2011. Back in 1980 we thought it was unlikely we'd ever see a summer heat wave that bad again, and we didn't......until 2011. However, one miserable summer without a car taught me a lesson and the next car I bought (within about a year's time) did indeed have air conditioning.

Carol, I love the OCS website and the mesonet and use their data in so many different ways. I just wish OCS would update their website at least with averages that go through 2010 instead of 2000. The wind rose is so helpful in understanding the prevailing winds, at least statistically. (It seems more and more that we are seeing weather anomalies every year that defy all the statistics.)

George, Sometimes I think about doing just that---planting only the most productive variety or two, but then I think I'd miss the wide variety of shapes, colors, flavors and textures we enjoy in fresh tomatoes. For canning, I don't care...as long as I have lots of tomatoes, it doesn't matter what they are.

I don't think I planted beans in shade deliberately until about 2008, and I was shocked how much longer they stayed productive in the hottest part of our summers. Now I try to get them afternoon, or at least mid-day, shade whenever I can.

Dawn

Thanks for the welcome, macmex. I was just going by the title of the questions that show up here on the right side. My advice isn't always the best because I live in a different area. 100 degrees is the hottest I have ever experienced down here. We don't have a/c in the truck now. I tend to stay home more and let hubby do the shopping. I have tinnitus pretty bad and riding with the windows down and the big log trucks zooming by hurts alot.

The wind rose thing IS interesting. I am not surprised to see south and southeast winds predominent. Also the maximum gusts and averages. I plan to put tomatoes where the fall plants are now, so they will be facing south next year. No shade there. I saw a pic on line where trellises went across the 4' span and there were several in the bed. I thought it was too close for what they were growing, but I suppose beans could be done that way, for shading each other. Harder to pick, though. What do you plant after onions. Some say they are alleopathic. I was thinking cow peas.

I put lots of things after onions but it varies from year to year.

In the beds that had the short-daylength onions, I'm usually harvesting those in May, so I tend to put winter squash, southern peas or melons in there as replacements.

In the beds that had the short daylength onions, I'm generally not harvesting those until sometime in June. Because of the heat, that bed more often than not gets southern peas of one type or another. Sometimes it is pink eye purple hull cowpeas, but other times it might be one of the other cowpeas or even zipper peas or cream peas. Sometimes those areas get okra.

I don't necessarily do it the same way any two years. I try to go with the flow and use those spots that open up to plant something that either isn't planted at all yet, or something I think I didn't plant enough of earlier in the season.

If it is a really good veggie year, meaning that I got everything in the ground early and it all is growing like crazy and producing well, I might just sow buckwheat in the onion beds and let that grow a few weeks before rototilling it into the ground and then planting fall tomato plants in the former onion beds.

This year, I had lots of onion necks breaking prematurely and randomly on extremely windy days. This was before the onions were ready to harvest. Since I raise my own seedlings in my greenhouse, it always has random leftovers in it, or even planned seedlings that just aren't in the ground yet. This year I had lots of extra pepper plants needing a home, so every time the wind snapped an onion neck prematurely, I pulled the onion to use and stuck a pepper plant in that spot, taking care not to put any two pepper plants too closely together. I did that over a period of a few weeks. By the time I harvested the last of the mature short-day onions, I had a bed full of knee-high pepper plants. I also stuck an ornamental sweet potato plant in there randomly to replace harvested onions, so that by mid-summer, the peppers had a living mulch of gorgeous ornamental sweet potato plants. That was in the short-daylength onion bed. In the intermediate and long daylength onion bed, I stuck roselle (hibiscus sabdariffa) plants in that bed about every 4' when an onion was pulled to use in cooking, and in the spaces in between the hibiscus plants, I would pull an onion and plant a watermelon. Both beds did equally well. I also randomly insert flower seedlings raised from seed in the greenhouse, so that we have warm-season flowers going into the ground as well. This year, I used a lot of lion's tail plants that way.

Whenever I have a hole to fill in the garden (since empty space will become filled with weeds if I don't put something better there) in July and August, I tend to stick squash (summer or winter) seeds in there to fill the holes since they don't mind the mid-summer through late-summer heat. This year I also stuck fennel, dill and parsley seedlings in random empty spots opened up by the harvest of onions and other cool-season crops. They provide lots of food for beneficial insects and butterflies. In a way, it doesn't matter what I plant there. I just want to have plants that are multipurpose (beautiful, for example, but also that provide food, shelter for beneficial insects or birds, or are useful in some other way).

My random approach to just putting stuff in the ground here and there to fill areas left empty by harvest probably wouldn't appeal to someone who likes to have a neat, tidy garden with things all in neat little rows. That's not my garden. My garden is a jungle with everything interplanted. I like having plants at different heights mixed together so the taller plants shade the medium-sized plants and the medium-height plants shade the short plants. I also constantly, from the very first day that I plant, mix in flowers and herbs of all kinds. I think those companion plants are the reason I almost never see a single tomato or tobacco hornworm in my garden, even though most years I have 100+ tomato plants, and also other nightshade plants the hornworms like, including peppers, daturas, nicotianas and petunias.

I always let some plants go to seed in the garden, so most years we will have a multitude of the following sprouting from mid-spring through mid-summer: Texas hummingbird sage, verbena bonariensis, borage, chamomile, lemon balm, moss rose, zinnias, basil, hollyhocks, salvia farinacea and ornamental peppers. Sometimes I'll have volunteer melons or tomato plants. So, if a hole opens up in an onion bed or elsewhere and I don't have something specific planned to go into that area, I always can just dig up and transplant a few volunteers to fill those holes.

Dawn

Dawn, I love a jungle, too. It makes my husband twitch. The idea of living mulch appeals to me. Watermelon/roselle, yes!

The watermelon and roselle combination rocked. The hibiscus foliage helped to shade the melons, which are prone to sunscald here in July and August. The melon plants helped keep the soil moist and cool beneath the hibiscus plants. I harvested the last melon from those particular plants (I had others in two different locations) about two weeks before I started harvesting roselles in September, so this particular combination has a timing that works perfectly.

We had a neighbor who could plant a straight row with his eyes closed. My garden just about drove him stark raving mad. He refused to believe I planted in zig zag and other patterned rows on purpose. I really believe he just thought I was an idiot who couldn't plant a straight row if my life depended on it. Luckily, I didn't care what he thought. (I mean that in a nice way---he was a good man.)

When Mother Nature starts planting everything in straight rows with no assistance from mankind, then I'll start planting in straight rows.

Dawn