Yeah, well, 100 degrees isn’t fun in the garden, for people or plants. 
     Hopefully you kept track of the forecast, and watered before the temperature bolted.  The trick is to get the moisture into the soil before the heat, not during the heat, just in case any phytophthora fungal organisms exist – they’ll go crazy when in both heat and moisture, and your plants may then be goners. 
     When you water ahead of the heat, the soil moisture stays cooler in the root zones, so any existing phytophthora won't as readily affect your plants.

The first lettuce seeds germinated!
     The first of the 24 varieties of lettuce seeds that I sowed last weekend are coming up – Bibb, Kagraner Sommer, and Tom Thumb.  21 varieties to go!
     See the picture sequence at left for the seeding process, using my 30-year-old Speedling (R) trays that I purchased from Peaceful Valley Farm Supply (www.groworganic.com). The drip trays became available a couple of years ago, too.  Yes, the set is relatively expensive with shipping, but mine are still serving me well after all these years!  I use the 2" cell size.
     In the past, I’ve been careful to let only two or at most three seeds fall into each cell, so I could snip the less-vigorous ones when transplanting them.  This time, since many of my seed packets were 2 years old, I was more generous to make sure I got good germination.  The Bibb especially seems to have germinated all of the dozen-or-so seeds in each cell.  When transplanting these, I’ll either snip all but two seedlings, or separate the seedlings into separate plants. 
     The reason to snip instead of pull extras out of the cell when allowing the remaining ones to develop further is so you don’t disturb the root of the couple you want to develop, which would set back the seedling a week or two.
    
Other “Seedy” Notes
     As some herbs reseed themselves, transplant them for overwintering in the garden.  Dill, especially, seems to germinate better this way, so take advantage of it.
     Problems with seed germination may be due to old seed, soil that is too warm or has been allowed to dry out, or seeds that were sown either too deeply or not deeply enough.  
     Keep seedbeds moist and shaded from hot afternoon sun until the seedlings develop two to four true leaves. 
     When sowing cover crops for the fall and winter, consider edible ones.  Kale and rocket (roquette, arugula) are full-flavored leafy vegetables that withstand freezing.  Both germinate in cool weather and are welcome fresh greens for stir-fry and soups all winter long.  In the spring, they can be easily turned under as "green manure" when preparing the soil for the main spring and summer crops.

     Dare I admit that my enthusiasm for my nightly plateful of tomatoes is diminishing?   Saying that feels like heresy for a gardener.  But, I can’t say that I’m regretting that my wonderfully productive plants bearing their bounty since June are mostly pooping out (maybe a dozen more green ones yet to ripen, and the Sungold keeps pumping).  My tastebuds still thrill at the first couple of mouthfuls, but then I recognize that the acidity is more pronounced than the balance for which I chose those varieties – Celebrity, Green Zebra, Stupice – and for the always magnificently flavored and productive Sungold. 
     I grew other varieties this year, but wasn’t particularly impressed with either their growth or flavor – although Tangerine was plentiful enough to always add brilliant orange chunks to my plateful of red ones. But the flavor was mild and undistinctive; good for color but that was it.
     Nice to have the additional tasteful harvests of figs and beans and squash and peppers, which are my always-have-to-grows.  And, I harvested 6 jujubes – “Chinese Dates” – which I loved when we lived in Davis.  Crunchy and very sweet like an apple now when still mottled green and brown.  If I’d left them to mature more, they’d shrivel and turn completely brown and taste even richer, looking and tasting like dates. 
     I feel so virtuous about my harvests when I see the prices at grocery stores or even farmers’ markets, recognizing how much more of all these vegetables and fruits I eat because the plants keep producing – that I certainly wouldn’t if I had to purchase them!

 Recommendations for every garden
     My recommendations to new gardeners is three-fold:  1) Try at least once to grow everything you’re curious about, just for the experience, but 2) In general, grow what your family will eat, and 3) Grow what will produce a lot of food for a long time in the space and under the conditions that you have. 
     For example, 1) Grow corn once just out of curiosity, but its long season to maturity and need for a lot of space preclude the value of the one or two ears of corn you’ll get, 2) Grow something new each season in the hopes that your family will enjoy adding its nutrition and novelty to its list of regular ingredients, but don’t keep growing it if they don’t like it, and 3) Grow indeterminate tomatoes because they’ll keep producing until frost, but don’t struggle to keep them alive through the winter since they’ll taste no better than store-bought and are therefore a waste of garden space and effort; instead, grow what thrives during the chill! 
 
Moving on to the Fall garden  
     September is transition time.  We never know what the upcoming two months’ weather will be, so we take advantage of preparing for both more summer and the shift to cooler weather.  That way, whatever comes, something will be successfully growing in our gardens. 
     In case the weather stays hot, I plant any summer crops that I can conceivably get a crop in about 60 days.
     For the most part, I count on getting an early start with both seeding and transplanting cool-season crops.  I purchase from my favorite nurseries whatever seedlings I can find of baby bok choy, broccoli, broccoli raab, cabbage, cauliflower, chard, cilantro, kale, leeks, lettuce, parsley, and spinach.  The point is to get growing as much as possible as soon as possible, so you can start eating them as soon as possible.
     At the same time, I also sow seeds of all of these, since they’re available in so many more varieties than commercially as seedlings. I also sow seeds of beets and carrots and kohlrabi directly where they’ll mature because they need to immediately put down their tap roots so they’ll develop straight and long deeply into the soil. 
     Sweet peas are also best sown directly where they’ll grow.  I put them on the far side of my edible peas’ cage, which is on the downside of a hill and therefore not very accessible.  Even if both types set pods at the same time, the poisonous sweet pea pods are fuzzy so easily discernible from the edible pods that are smooth.