Dear friends, and fellow gardeners,
Now that the summer heat is here, please remember to take extra time and care with your lawn and in your garden. Here are Heat Guidelines for Your Lawn and Garden.
Let’s remember to:
1. Water only early in the morning; watering after 10:00 a.m., we can lose 40%-60% of our water due to any slight breeze crossing the path of the sprinkler head. As with a hand held hose, also, the point of this comment is that whatever we are watering should be relatively dry by sundown.
2. Be careful when to apply fertilizer, insecticide, fungicide, soaps, and horticultural oils, deer, and critter repellant. As mentioned above, early is better, and as for herbicides, they are more sensitive to temperatures, and wind. Herbicides can turn into vapor in heat (above 80 degrees), and damage above (trees), and neighboring foliage (wind). Oils should not be applied to plants in direct sunlight.
3. Don’t spray or wet leaves while you water; aim for the roots. Very few plants actually like wet leaves, or absorb water through their leaves. In fact, wet leaves on plants and lawns in 70 degree evening temperatures can invite disease.
4. Container gardens will benefit from this also. “No one likes to go to bed with wet feet” (Aubrey Hampton, former Passaic County Agricultural Agent). Although I like to use saucers under my patio plants during this time of year, this can enable some waterings to be stretched to once every 2-3 days.
5. Heat wilt can be a tricky adversary for container gardening, (and flower beds), as it fools people into thinking that the plants need to be watered. Then, after you have watered, you have unwittingly started an over-watered situation that can be difficult to fix.
5a. Certain tropical plant nurseries in Florida will not let their wholesale customers in to see perfectly healthy plant material in the middle of the day due to heat wilt.
6. Lawns – use guidelines 1 and 2, and ONLY 100% organic fertilizer. Less frequent and deeper waterings are affective if your soil drains well. A recent visit to a client’s property yielded this burn situation, (see photo), when someone left articles on their lawn.
Everett Fink is a Certified Rutgers Master Gardener, Certified Pesticide applicator, and N.J. State licensed Home Improvement Contractor. Everett was designated Top Tier Designer at Sponzilli Landscape, and currently Owns Property Details LLC, in New Jersey. Property Details has a Container Gardening Division designing and maintaining Pools, Patios, and Porches with beautiful flowers, and foliage.
