Monday, July 15, 2019
By John Voket
Garden lovers have often spent sweltering summers staring at the brown and withered landscape plants that bloomed with so much promise just a month or two earlier. How do you save your gorgeous landscaping if you're facing an extended heatwave?Eddie Powell at the University of Florida IFAS Extension offers a few tips to homeowners subject to periods of high heat:
- Plants grown with the correctly applied rate of nutrients will tolerate hotter temperatures better and recover from wilt injury faster than plants grown with little to no nutrients.
- If high heat is predicted, Powell recommends watering vegetable garden plants early in the day to help protect them. He says well-watered soil will stay cooler than a dry soil and keep plants hydrated.
- Beware however, because saturated soil conditions can damage the root systems of most plants over a few days, so make sure the ground is well-drained.
Melissa G. Womack of the Agriculture and Natural Resources department at the University of California suggests the following:
- Avoid fertilizing plants or trees during hot summer months. She says when a fertilizer is applied, especially one that is high in nitrogen, a plant is triggered to produce more green growth — demanding more water and nutrient needs.
- When temperatures get extreme, having a good layer of mulch prevents soil from heating up excessively and losing water to evaporation. Womack says to apply 4 inches of a medium shred bark mulch to insulate the soil.
- During extreme heat, Womack also suggests relocating any exposed potted plants to a shaded area.
Rebecca Latta Consulting of Southern California tells her clients that the following heat tolerant species from South America and the Sonoran desert serve sun drenched properties well:
- Tipu
- Mesquite
- Desert willow
- Velvet ash
- Pinyon pine
- California juniper
- Red willow
- Desert apricot
- Cypress
Latta also advises weeding out understory competition such as ivy, creeping fig and vincathat can sap vital water and nutrients away from trees and shrubs.
Finally, Greg Seaman at learn.eartheasy.com says during a heat wave, use light colored mulches will reflect the sunlight and help maintain cooler surface soil conditions. And leave your grass taller than usual to benefit the soil by helping to retain moisture.
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