I’m located in inland southern California, zone 9b. Normally I’d be harvesting ripe tomatoes by now, but I’m certainly not complaining about this cooler weather. This is the second year I’ve grown tomatoes over this arch, really love how it looks when fully covered.
OP is in SoCal, so perhaps water restrictions and/or just a deeply dry climate making it hard to keep plants from getting a lil thirsty.
Yep, it’s pretty darn dry where I’m at. The drip irrigation I use doesn’t fall under our current water restrictions, but I still try to not use excessive amounts. I also mulch everywhere and add increasing layers as the weather heats up.
This is my soil from when I was weeding yesterday, plenty moist and look at all those worms!