Cole Porter was right. It’s too darn hot.
As we watch the high temps stubbornly refuse to budge, it’s tempting to hunker down indoors and let our gardens go. Don’t. Those plants really need us now.
The best thing you can do to help is to water well. That means watering deeply less often.
Photo: Miri Talabac, UME
Daily sprinkles do more harm than good, stimulating shallow roots, which have a harder time drawing up the water plants need.
Light watering also encourages tomatoes and peppers to develop black, leathery blossom end rot.
So water vegetable plants deeply twice a week. Dial it back to once a week when things cool down.
Watering in the morning is best as is directing water to the base of plants.
If you planted new trees or shrubs this year, water them slowly and deeply at least once a week to soak the root ball. Use a soaker hose, a 5-gallon bucket with a few nail holes, or a hose on a slow trickle.
Photo: Joe Murray, Bugwood.org
And no, rain is not enough. Here are a few more tips on watering trees and shrubs.
If you’re growing anything in containers, check those pots daily. Most need to be watered every day. And do some supplemental watering in your perennial beds. Everything is dry, dry, dry.
Smart tools make watering easier and use less water.
Soaker hoses – made from recycled tires – water plants slowly at the base of plants so you don’t lose water to evaporation.
Drip irrigation does the same and lets you customize water zones. I can’t say enough good things about the drip irrigation system on a timer in my vegetable beds.
Photo: Robert Cook
Rain barrels are a godsend. An eighth of an inch of rain on the average roof fills a 50-gallon barrel. That’s free water, folks. I have four rain barrels and plan to add two more.
Photo: Rutgers University
Avoid watering with sprinklers. Overhead watering can promote disease and cause the loss of up to 80 percent of water to evaporation.
Here are some more tips on conserving water and using smart tools.
In addition to boosting plants’ water needs, heat zaps plants in other ways.
Have you noticed flowers falling off your tomato plants? Sustained high temps prevent pollination, causing plants to jettison their blooms. Don’t worry. Flowering and fruiting will restart when it cools.
Trees react to high heat, too. Many are raining down leaves. This is a natural stress reaction. In fact, trees don’t need all their leaves. They’re just shedding some to cut down on maintenance.
Unless the leaf loss is dramatic, those trees will be just fine.
Lawns are feeling the heat as well, browning here, there, and everywhere. They are not – I repeat not – dead. Lawns naturally go dormant in high heat and will spring back with rains. Only new lawns need to be watered.
If you’d like to boost your landscape’s resistance to heat and drought – and the need for supplemental watering – add some water-wise plants.
Deep-rooted, well-adapted native plants are a great choice. So are plants with fleshy leaves or roots, blue leaves, skinny or fuzzy leaves – all natural adaptations that mean these plants need less water. Think sedum, iris, lavender, threadleaf coreopsis, and lamb’s ear.
Here are some tips for creating a more climate-resilient landscape.
Watering wisely and picking the right plants will help you build a more heat-resilient landscape that can not only beat the heat but look good doing it.
By Annette Cormany, Principal Agent Associate and Master Gardener Coordinator, Washington County, University of Maryland Extension.
This article was previously published by Herald-Mail Media. Read more by Annette.
