Hi, everyone. Welcome to Kellogg Garden's YouTube
Channel. I'm Kim and today, I'm going to show you how you can
protect your garden from the extreme heat, but first, make
sure you hit the subscribe button and the notification
bell so anytime that Kellogg has a gardening video like
this, you'll be informed. I never thought I would be
talking about how to protect your garden from the extreme
heat. Being that we are about sixty miles southwest of
Seattle, Washington, and we're in gardening zone 8b. We
really don't get too many days with temperatures over 90
degrees. So, when we had our big heatwave at the end of June,
I frantically tried to do some research and figure out
how I was going to protect all the plants that aren't used to
that extreme heat. When plants become stressed by the heat,
they often show many different signs. Their leaves can start
wilting from the loss of water. They can start dropping
their leaves. Many plants will actually shed some of their
foliage to save water. Leaves can turn yellow or brown, cool
season crops can start bolting, and vegetable crops can have
difficulty producing in the excessive heat. Make sure you
water early in the morning before the sun shines directly
on your garden. You want to make sure that you're not risking
the water evaporating and not hitting the plant roots, because
that can cause your plants to burn. The most efficient way to
water your garden is by using soaker or irrigation hoses, and
this is because they slowly bring the water to the plant's
roots before evaporating.
Now, we use a drip system in our garden; And this has been
customized to meet our specific needs, and we can add micro
sprinklers or root lines as needed. It's really important
not to spray your plant leaves with water during the middle of
the day. The water droplets can act as a magnifier to the sun
causing even more intensive heat and it will damage them
very quickly. There is such a thing as overwatering your
plants. If you're not sure if your plant needs water or not,
test the soil before you water by sticking your finger an inch into the ground or container to see how moist it is.
A plant can have enough water and still wilt from the hot sun.
Don't water it unless the soil is dry.
I think the hardest thing for me was knowing that really delicate balance between overwatering and not watering enough.
These are brand new annuals that I got a couple of days before we had that extensive heat,
and as you can tell, some of the leaves are fried from getting too much heat.
I overwatered. If you stick your finger in there, it's completely overwatered and I haven't watered for days.
So you just have to be really, really careful of these poor, little, sensitive plants that don't have established roots yet.
Make sure you don't mow the lawn during a heatwave. Your
lawn might not look as nice as you want it to, but keeping that
lawn at least three inches long it can add shade to the grass
which will retain the moisture in the soil. One of the most
important things that you can do to protect your most
vulnerable and young plants is providing shade for them.
You can use shade cloth which is a piece of fabric used in
gardens to protect plants from too much sunlight. This is
actually my very favorite thing now and has really saved my
garden. I learned about this amazing product just a few
weeks before our triple day heat wave. You can use other
things to shade your plants as well if the shade cloth
isn't available to you. Umbrellas work really well. To
shade your plants, I found that the tilted umbrellas were the
best. But I still had to move the umbrella as the sun was
moving throughout the day. Sailcloth is another
alternative as well as just using bedsheets, old table
cloth towels, basically anything that you can find to
provide shade for your plants so the leaves don't start
burning. If your only option is a dark cloth, keep it several
inches above or away from the plants. They tend to absorb
the heat and burn the foliage that's touching it. Move your
containers out of the sun when you have that extreme heat if
you can. Try to move them in the shade. Containers tend to
dry out faster so they're going to need to be watered more often
than your other garden plants and make sure you increase the
amount of water you give to the container in hot temperatures
so the soil doesn't dry out. I always worry about this
planter right here, because you really should avoid planting
flowers and plants in the dark colored containers. They absorb
the heat more than the lighter colors and they actually can
burn the plant's roots. So, you can try putting potted
plants in inside other larger pots with good drainage for
more shade and insulation. It is so tempting to want to weed or dig a
plant out here and there, but it's really, really important to
keep the soil alone during the hot temperatures because you
can release the trapped water if you start digging and
weeding the garden beds. Adding mulch to the garden beds is
such a benefit to the garden, especially during the extreme
summer heat. It protects the soil from direct sun exposure,
helps reduce the evaporation and soil moisture, and maintains
a more consistent soil temperature. Thank you so much
for following along to If you liked what you saw, please tap
the like button and if you have any questions or comments, make
sure you leave them in the comment section as well. Until
next time. Happy gardening.