Russ Steele
By midnight on the 10th of August we will have observed 30 days with a spotless sun. Here are some details from SpeceWeather.com
Daily Sun: 07 Aug 09
The sun is blank--no sunspots. Credit: SOHO/MDI
Sunspot number: 0
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 29 days
2009 total: 171 days (78%)
Since 2004: 682 days
Typical Solar Min: 485 days
explanation | more info
Updated 08 Aug 2009
I wonder if the quiet sun had anything to do with the tomatoes not ripening in Nebraska?
A Sarpy County farmer, master gardener and longtime competitor at the county fair, Green has 67 plants — 27 varieties — this year at his farm outside Springfield, Neb. And they just aren’t ripening.
Blame it on the cool weather, he said. Tomatoes need warm days and warm nights to ripen. So far, though, much of eastern Nebraska is running about 4 to 6 degrees below normal for July.
Kathleen Cue, horticulturist for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension in Douglas and Sarpy Counties, said many common varieties will need a week of sustained warmth to ripen. The lower end of acceptable warmth, she said, is a daytime high in the 70s and nighttime low in the 60s. Noticeably warmer than that would be better for more rapid ripening, she said.
Native to Central and South America, tomatoes need warmth to stimulate fruiting, rather than growing foliage.
With eastern and central Nebraska seeing what could be one of the 10 coolest Julys on record, genuine warmth has been hard to come by. Metro-area temperatures for the rest of this week are forecast to be in the mid-70s to low 80s during the day and upper 50s to low 60s at night.
The type of tomato classified as a determinate, such as Celebrity and Big Boy, are about two weeks behind in ripening and could end up a month behind, Cue said. Determinates tend to be larger and are bred so all the tomatoes on a single plant ripen simultaneously for easy harvesting and shipping, she said.
We used to live in Sarpy County Nebraska in the late 1970s and in the summer the only comfortable place was next to the AC unit in the house.
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