Preparing the Garden for the Coming Heat

Pink Alstroemeria, yellow-and-orange Bulbine, and purple Brunfelsia pauciflora.

Third-size artichokes ready for eating. Each successive set is smaller than the previous ones.

Breadseed poppy blossoms and seed pods.

Blossoming tatsoi are edible and sweeter than previous harvests of just leaves.

Yellow chard begins to bolt. Smaller leaves are still edible.

Dinosaur or Tuscan kale - Lacilata - can keep producing young tender leaves for years.

Several plantings of pea seeds from fall through winter results in months of peas to harvest.

Nasturtiums are colorful and slightly peppery, both blossoms and leaves.

Persimmon blossoms.

Shirley poppies.

Boysenberry blossoms and fruit set.

Yellow spuria iris.

Grape clusters.

Limonium perezii - Dependably drought tolerant, receives only rain (this year's total was 6.01 inches.....)

Almost-full-size "bebra" first fig crop on last year's brown wood, and tiny second crop on this year's green wood.

Hollyhock beauty.

Sungold cherry tomato is already six feet tall and set with fruit, and determinate varieties are also developing nicely.

Beautiful peachy bearded iris.

Echium gains height, and Nicotiana sylvestris in back.

Rat-tail cactus blossom.

We’ve just had a bit of a taste of our coming Summer Heat, with a day reaching 93 degrees, still pleasant enough to keep the doors and windows open during the day and leave more windows open at night than we’ve managed thus far this year.  In the garden, the tomatoes are loving the additional warmth and starting to blossom and even set some cherry tomato fruits, and beans and cukes and squashes are sprouting strongly.  But the unpleasant intensity of heat will be coming, so make sure your garden soil and plants are well-prepared to thrive and not just survive its onslaught.
 
Preparing the Garden

• Watering – Continue deep watering so the full root systems of each plant stay moist (not soggy) from watering to watering.
• Fertilizing – Assuming you incorporated amendments like manure and compost initially into your growing beds prior to planting, sprinkle some more Dr. Earth or EB Stone organic slow-release fertilizer when vegetables start blossoming so they have the additional energy to continue setting and maturing their fruit.  Choose fertilizer versions that have lower first (nitrogen) numbers but higher second (phosphorus) and third (potash) numbers so the plant’s energy will be more directed to developing its roots and flowers and fruits.
• Planting new stuff – This is up to you depending on your locale.  Here in Pasadena in the past several years, I’ve discontinued planting additional tomatoes and other summer-lovers because I just didn’t want to spend the money for the additional water I’d have to use as a result of the constant intense heat; and when I did plant and water them, the resulting struggling plants didn't really thrive anyway.   So, if you choose to add more plants, getting them in as soon as possible now to assure that their roots will get well established before the real heat arrives and stays.  This is why I make a point of getting my consecutive plantings of tomatoes established by the end of April at the latest.  Consider that anything under 90 degrees is ok for plants, above 90 degrees will begin being stressful for plants, and above 100 is definitely torturous.  At these high temperatures, plants literally shut down and discontinue photosynthesis, so continuing to water them will potentially drown them until temperatures lower to the low 90s.
• Mulching – Keep a two- to four-inch layer of organic mulch covering soil to help prevent crusting and cracking of the soil surface, hold in moisture, encourage earthworms, moderate soil temperatures, improve the soil as it decomposes, and prevent weed seeds from germinating (and any that do germinate are easy to pull up).
• Covering plants – As a last-minute protective measure on any torrid-heat days, spunbonded polyester or similar fabric (even just plain old cheesecloth) helps cut down the amount of direct sun but still allows in water and air circulation.  This worked well on my tomatoes that year when we had two days of 116-degree heat. 

 
Loving the Harvests

• Artichokes – We’ve enjoyed the single super-large first globes and the 2nd and 3rd progressively-smaller ones, and are waiting on the 4th set of tinier “baby-size” artichokes.  Amazing flavor – as with everything that’s literally eaten within half an hour of picking!
• Breadseed Poppies – What colorful and delicate blossoms! I’ll leave the blossom pods to ripen so I can collect the seeds.  See my note below for doing this at school and community gardens.
• Baby Bok Choy, Tatsoi – After months of harvesting single outer leaves, it’s now a wonderful bonus that the bolting shoots going to seed are even sweeter than the single leaves were. 
• Chard – These tender, colorful and tasty leaves also continue to be tasty but smaller as the bolting stalk grows to some six feet tall!  I’ll collect some seed but also let a couple stalks of each color scatter their seed and wait for them to germinate next fall so I can transplant them as soon as them come up on their own.
• Kales – The Lacinato – Dinosaur or Tuscan – kale is the only one that seems never to bolt, so you can just keep pulling off the individual leaves as the stem grows taller and puts out side-shoots.  Years ago, I finally pulled up one that’d lasted for some four years, just because I wanted something smaller in the garden.  I enjoy the flavor of this variety more than the other kales which are more bitter and tougher in texture.
• Lettuce – Even the “bolt-resistant” varieties planted last fall that we've been eating since have finally bolted.  The issue is the heat – even though any fabric covering shades the plants, the heat accumulated around the lettuce plants results in the hormonal shift to bolting.  But this is worth the couple of weeks’ more harvesting before the lettuce turns too bitter!  Seeds and transplants put into the garden now will have this problem later this summer.  Consequently, plan on these two planting times each year to make sure you have lettuce almost year-round.
• Peas – I’d reseeded my peas about four times from last fall through the winter because not too many actually germinated each time.  But now I’m literally reaping the benefit, because many of them did indeed finally germinate and so I have several generations of plants at different stages of developing their foliage, growing taller, putting out blossoms, setting pea pods, some almost ready to pick, and others dying after harvesting the very first batch that had germinated.  Another reason to keep resowing every couple of weeks through the fall and winter!

 
Note to school and community gardens
When you allow plants to mature fully so you can collect the seed, I suggest erecting a sign such as “We’re saving the poppy [or whatever] seeds!” facing the public walkway or street so non-gardener passersby know that all that “trashy dead stuff” remains for a good purpose and is temporary.  Otherwise they may complain to their city council person that the garden is neglecting to clean up all its trash and making the neighborhood look bad.
 
For more garden tasks, see May