Getting The Garden Ready For Summer’s Heat

Dancy tangerine with fading nasturtiums underneath as mulch

Euphorbia - dwarf Crown of Thorns

Yellow "crookneck" squash that's had its crookneck bred out of it. My favorite squash that tastes already buttered.

Second seeding of yellow squash - sown when the first batch started bearing fruit. Third seeding will be made now that this second one is setting fruit. This reseeding technique means that I'll be eating succulent "baby" squash from successive sowings all the way through the summer into the fall. The blossoms that have the long stems (on the left) are the male flowers, that usually come first. The blossoms that have shorter stems and a swelling underneath the blossom (on the right and bottom) are the females. If the females don't get pollinated, they'll shrivel up and die.

Light yellow brugsmania with "tails"

'Charles Grimaldi' Brugsmania has a wonderfully delight fragrance at dusk

Lemon verbena has delicately tiny white flower sprays and really fragrant leaves

This is the normal time for amaryllis to bloom in the garden. When planting a gift amaryllis from December, it'll take about two years to "revert" back to its "correct" blooming time now.

Yellow reblooming daylily

Potatoes in a double-deck tire planted in February and filled with compost as the stems elongated. It's now ready for another tire on top. When the foliage dies back in another month or two, potatoes will have formed all along the stems that were buried.

Plectranthus - I planted the variegated one, and the green shoots reverted back to the "normal" coloration.

Bulbine blooms from February through December, starting at the bottom of their stalks and continuing to grow and bloom for the rest of the spring, summer and fall. Its succulent shoots are easily broken off and replanted, making a groundcover that continues growing in one direction similar to bearded iris.

Pakistan mulberry ripening

Iochroma is loved by hummingbirds

Volunteer Sungold cherry tomato germinated in early January and has gotten huge - more than 5 feet tall - and is blossoming and setting fruit.

Sungold blossoms and fruitset

Chocolate Stripes tomato. I let my tomato plants keep their blossoms when the foliage reaches the second tier of the cage, indicating that the root system was well-developed. The buried 5-gallon nursery containers between each plant are filled with water along with the soil basin beneath each plant, making sure that the entire root zone is kept evenly moist.

First grapeset for these 3-year-old plants rooted from cuttings.

Thornless boysenberry blooms, fruit set, and ripening fruit. Let berries get fully black (not just dark purple), dull rather than shiny, with the green calyx "hat" at the top of the berry turning brown, and the berry literally falling into the palm of your hand when you "tickle" it from underneath. If you have to tug at the berry, it's not ripe yet.

Broccoli florets developing after the first main head was harvested.

Lettuce beginning to blossom. When more than half of the tiny flowers have dried, cover the entire plant with a big paper bag, and tie the bottom shut. The seeds will form and dry but not scatter since you've corralled them in the bag. When you can easily snap off the stem at its base, it's fully dry and can be stashed under a bed or other dry place until you're ready to sow in the fall. If the stem wobbles, it's not completely crispy dry, so wait another two or three weeks before trying again.

Fuji apple - allow only one apple to set among the 5 blossoms at each fruiting stem.

Peter's Honey fig fruitset.

Arctic Star nectarine fruitset

Spice Zee nectarine fruitset

Pink Carpet Rose

Super fragrant species purple single stock, and Bells of Ireland, Moluccella laevis

​With our blissfully pleasant temperatures in the 70s and 80s for months on end, we can easily fall victim to assuming these ideal conditions will continue and our garden plants will be just as happy as we gardeners are.  But, given that we’re moving toward the end of May, our summer’s heat will shortly be upon us.  Unless we change our activities to match the plants’ upcoming needs, now-happy plants will become stressed-out plants. And we gardeners will be disappointed in not getting the vegetables and flowers that we'd planned on.
     The critical elements to accomplish now for summer success include planting, fertilizing, watering, and mulching.
 
Planting
     Make your choices and get them into the ground or containers by the end of this month.  They’ll need several weeks to get acclimated to their new homes and environment as they begin to make new roots to establish themselves, so hopefully blasts of summer heat will wait until the later part of June. 
      Three planting tricks will help plants get established more quickly:

1. Dig planting holes at least a foot wider and deeper than the plant containers, and massage the rootballs to loosen the existing roots and incorporate some of the planting mix into the soil.
2. Create a berm around the edge of the dug-up soil as a watering basin to direct water down to the roots.
3. Place a piece of cardboard or plastic on the south side of the plant to shade the plant from mid- to late-afternoon direct sun for at least a week, until the plant stays perky throughout the day.  

 
Fertilizing
     For tomatoes and other vegetable and berry plants that are starting to bloom,  water in a timed-release fertilizer to provide nutrition for the extra-hard work the plant will have to accomplish over the next several months of blossoming and setting and maturing fruits.  
     Ornamental plants appreciate the extra nutrition as well.
 
Watering
     Water deeply and less frequently to assure that the water sinks down to below the plants’ rootzones to keep them well-hydrated during our blasts of summer heat.  A stick or shovel inserted the day after watering will alert you to how deeply the water actually went – so you can adjust the length of time you water to make sure it goes deeply enough each time you water. 
     Depth guidelines depend on the genetics of the vegetable you’re growing.  For summer vegetables, these are:

• 1 foot deep = celery, chard, lettuce
• 2 feet deep = bean, carrot, cucumber, eggplant, pepper, squash
• 3 feet deep = melon, pumpkin, tomato

     Frequency guidelines depend on your soil, the amount of foliage, and the air temperature.

• Soil - Start with once a week for loam soil, twice a week for sandy soil, and once every two weeks for clay soil
• Foliage - More frequently for tomato plants that are 5’ tall with lots of foliage
• Temperature – More frequently when temperatures are above 95 degrees; even more when above 100 degrees.

     The problem with watering too frequently is that the water stays within the top several inches of the soil, so plant roots stay there as well.  Then, when we get our several-days-long blasts of summer heat, those top several inches of soil are too hot for the roots, and there are no roots further down in the cooler soil, so the plants stress out or actually die.
 
Mulching
     Organic mulch provides five benefits to the garden by providing shade:

1. Conserves soil moisture – irrigation water doesn’t evaporate as quickly, so roots stay hydrated.
2. Moderates soil temperature – soil doesn’t suffer swings in heat and cold and wind, so seeds and seedlings and plants can grow without these stresses.
3. Keeps weeds from germinating; any that do are easy to pull – Weed seeds that require light to germinate are foiled.  Any that do germinate grow very spindly stems up through the mulch to reach the light, so are easily removed.
4. Lessens erosion – The force of the drops of rain and irrigation is broken by hitting the mulch, and water seeps gently into the soil, so downbursts can’t sweep away bare soil.  
5. Enrichens soil nutrition and texture as the mulch decomposes and feeds beneficial microorganisms – At the junction of the mulch and the soil surface, the mulch gradually breaks down, becoming perpetually slow-release fertilizer that dissolves further into the soil.

 
For more tasks and opportunities, see May Monthly Tips