10 Steps To Protect Your Garden During Heat Wave: Stay Cool

You can take steps to protect your garden during heat waves: reduce the exposure of your plants to the sun, increase their water intake, and keep them healthy. These tips will keep your garden cool and save your plants from dying.

Extended hot periods are deadly to plants, so pay as much attention as you can to your garden. Continue reading this article to learn more tips to keep your garden cool during a heat wave.

How To Protect Your Garden During Heat Waves in 10 Steps?

To protect your garden during heat waves you must start with thoroughly watering your plants. Remember to not water the leaves, do mulch the soil and ensure they are shaded. You can also install a drip irrigation system and harvest your crops along with other steps.

1. Thoroughly Water Your Plants

Give your plants a deep watering, at the right time of the day. In the early morning (before the day gets hot) or late evening (when the day is cool), water your plants thoroughly. Even if you think that the soil is wet enough, water them some more. However, ensure that the soil is well-drained so that every root of your plants can get water.

To know when to water plants during heat waves, just go to your garden. If the sun feels too hot and makes you very uncomfortable, do not water your plants. Watering them in very hot periods can shock them. The best time to water them is before the heat starts so that they can be hydrated enough to withstand the heat.

2. Do Not Water the Leaves

Yes, water your plants thoroughly in periods of hot weather. However, try not to water the leaves, as water on a plant’s leaves can do more harm than good. Water on your plants’ leaves can get hot (if it does not evaporate or dry quickly) and destroy some tissues in the leaves. Water the roots of your plants, as they are in the cool soil.

Watering the leaves of plants is still advantageous, so if you want to water the leaves, do so in the evening. Before the heat comes tomorrow, the water droplets must have dried up. Do not water the leaves if the water will not dry up some hours before the heat starts.

3. Ensure That the Soil Is Mulched

What you can do to help your plants, especially those growing outside, is to mulch the soil. Cover the soil with mulch to prevent the heat from destroying your plants’ roots. Mulch helps to keep the roots of your garden plants cool.

When you mulch the soil, the mulch acts as a barrier between the soil and the atmosphere. The air pockets in the mulch help prevent the heat of the sun from reaching the soil quickly. This means that with mulch present in the soil, only the stems, leaves, and upper parts of your plants will be exposed to the heat.

Mulch will also prevent water from evaporating quickly from the soil. Remember that in an extended hot period, your plants need as much moisture as they can get from the soil. Mulch traps the water droplets so that even in the hottest parts of the day, the roots of your plants will get constant moisture. Awesome, right?

4. Shade Your Plants

Using row covers, shade cloth, or any temporal structure to shade your plants is very essential in hot periods. Create shade for your plants to keep them safe from the hot sun. If you are growing plants in pots, simply move their pots to a cool location.

When growing plants in pots, prevent sunlight from reaching their pots because it can easily increase the soil temperature, harming your plants eventually. This means that the shade for your plants in pots should cover both the plant and substrate from direct sunlight.

When growing plants in a regular garden, the best you can do for them is to use shade cloth. Watering the soil and using mulch will help reduce the effect of the sun on the soil, so do not fail to regularly water and mulch the plants.

5. Install a Drip Irrigation System

To help water your plants efficiently and deeply, consider using drip irrigation or soaker hoses. Drip irrigation also helps to reduce water waste during the hot period, as you only get to water parts of the garden that need watering.

Another advantage of using drip irrigation is that you will not water the leaves. Remember to water the plants when the heat is not very intense while watering the garden during a heat wave.

6. Do Not Fertilize Your Plants

More nutrients in the soil means that the roots of your plants will find it more difficult to collect water from the soil. During hot periods of the day, plants need water, not nutrients. This means that you do not need to fertilize your plants. Excessive amounts of nutrients in the soil can also add to the heat and burn the leaves of your plants.

The only plants that you can fertilize during the hot period are container plants. You can fertilize them only when you have moved their pots to cool spots. So long as the heat does not affect them as it does other plants, you can fertilize them.

7. Regularly Harvest Your Produce

When gardening in extreme heat, collect your yield as quickly as you can. Harvesting your plants can prevent the heat from destroying your produce. It can also keep your plants slightly free from stress, as they have fewer fruits to send nutrients to.

8. Keep Pests and Diseases off Your Plants

Pests will most likely hide from the sun by dwelling in the mulch or below the leaves of your plants. You do not want these pests near your plants, as they can destroy the leaves of plants and leave the plants vulnerable to extreme elements. Keep pests off your garden to increase the chance of your plants recovering from the drought.

It is also common for plants to get diseases quickly in hot periods. It happens because many plants die or become too weak to fight these diseases during the hot period, exposing other (healthy) plants to the diseases. Watch out for sick plants and remove them from your garden to keep other plants safe.

9. Grow Heat-tolerant Plants

If you live in an area that experiences periods of extreme heat, you can ease your burden a bit by growing heat-tolerant plants. While these plants still need care during the hot period, they have higher chances to adapt to and recover from the hot period. You can grow either heat-tolerant plants or heat-tolerant varieties of your favorite plants.

10. Keep Your Plants as Healthy as Possible

Healthy plants can easily heal from heat stress. One of the easiest tips for protecting the garden from heat is simply keeping the plants healthy. There are multiple growing conditions of plants, so try to optimize as many as you can.

Some growing conditions to always consider are:

• Light exposure
• Water
• Nutrients
• pH
• Protection from pests and diseases

Though the temperature and maybe humidity are higher than normal during hot periods, try to keep the other needs of your plants in check. However, remember to wait until the hot period has ended before you fertilize your plants.

Frequently Asked Questions

– Will Your Plants Recover After the Heat Wave?

Yes, your plants will recover after the heat wave as long as you cared for them during the period. During the hot period, watch out for signs such as wilting and the browning of leaves. If you notice these signs, there’s a high chance that your plants will not recover.

During the hot period, the plants that will wilt or turn brown first and usually those that are more exposed to the sunlight. As soon as you notice those signs, protect the other plants so that you do not lose many plants at once. Note that even if your plants look weak during heat, they still have a chance of recovering.

– What Heat-tolerant Plants Can You Grow?

Some heat-tolerant plants that you can grow are cosmos, lantana, lemon verbena, salvia, marigold, geranium, and sedum. These plants have a higher chance of surviving hot periods, so consider growing them if you want a hardy garden. As for other crops, check for heat-tolerant varieties that you can grow.

Note that heat-tolerant or drought-tolerant plants are not free from the stress of high temperatures. Their being tolerant only means that they can adapt to slightly higher temperatures in comparison with other plants. This means that you still need to be as attentive to your heat-tolerant plants in your garden just as you’d be attentive to your other plants.

Conclusion

You are now ready to protect plants in extreme temperatures, right? Remember these points from the article:

• Provide shade to your garden plants so that the heat from the sun does not kill them.
• Watering plants during a hot period is very important. However, water the plants only at cool periods of the day.
• Do not water your plant leaves, as the warming water might destroy their tissues.
• Protecting potted plants from heat is very easy. Just move their pots to a cool spot.
• Remember to water your plants every day. Do not abandon your plants.

Now, you know how to protect plants from hot sun. Remember to keep your plants safe and healthy throughout the hot period.