Dealing with the heat wave

This weather has been amaz­ing and the fore­cast is for sev­eral more warm to hot days. I know it’s July in Ohio but enough is enough. We all have friends, fam­ily or neigh­bors who have lost some­thing dur­ing the past week’s storms. One friend’s new con­vert­ible now has no top, another’s car was in the garage only to have a large tree cave in the roof, one of my favorite farmer mar­ket ven­dors has lost sev­eral peach trees, streets are closed due to downed trees and elec­tric is out all over the place. Nature’s prun­ing tech­niques has done quite a job on the old, large, unhealthy hol­low trees that have top­pled down all over the county with the high winds.

The gar­dens are suf­fer­ing and the crops in the fields are also in sad shape. Relief in the terms of rain just doesn’t seem to be in the fore­see­able fore­cast. So what do we do? With water restric­tions in place, our water­ing sched­ule needs to be han­dled with care­ful thought. Plan on going out to water in the early morn­ing before the heat of the day hits, or late in the evening if desired. Gar­den­ing any­time dur­ing the day is out unless you want to end up in the hos­pi­tal being hydrated by an IV drip.

Those hang­ing bas­kets really need some fer­til­izer this time of year. My rec­om­men­da­tion is to fer­til­ize one time weekly. Water your hang­ing plants then fol­low with a shot of basic liq­uid fer­til­izer so that it doesn’t just run through the plant and out the hole. Begin­ning in mid July or early August, start using a bloom booster choice of fer­til­izer, one higher in phos­pho­rus, like 10–52-10 vari­ety, also one time weekly. Visit your local nurs­ery for their selections.

With all the great sum­mer sales at nurs­eries, it’s a tough deci­sion to buy or not dur­ing this hot spell. Plant­ing a new peren­nial, tree or shrub will require care­ful watch­ing and lots of water. Make sure you plan ahead or wait a few days to see if we will finally get a break com­ing up soon with slightly lower temperatures.

So let’s take care of our­selves first. Plan your gar­den­ing time dur­ing the early morn­ing or early evening hours. It’s still warm but bear­able. Put on some much needed bug spray and head out­side. Work in small ses­sions; take fre­quent breaks and drinks lots of water. Wear a big hat, light weight, light col­ored clothes and apply a good SPF sunscreen.

Cool­ing cloths are a new item that has been pop­ping up. I’ve seen more and more of these in cat­a­logs over the last cou­ple of years. My favorite is an Arc­tic Chill Cloth that you wet and roll up to place around your neck. It stays cool for hours and feels great dur­ing those short times in the gar­den. Made of a mate­r­ial that uses spe­cial poly­mers, you wet it, shake it out and use it all day long. I ordered mine from isabellacatalog.com but you can get dif­fer­ent ver­sions from other sources.

Cool­ing off with edi­bles: Put a Pop­si­cle in a glass and pour chilled club soda over the top. The Pop­si­cle will grad­u­ally melt, if you don’t eat it before, and it will leave a nice fla­vored soda behind. Make fruit ice cubes, freeze whole fruit like water­melon, berries and grapes. Make a pitcher of spa water. Add orange, lime or lemon slices to either still or fizzy water in a pitcher with a few sprigs of mint out of the gar­den and you will have a great pitcher of water for the entire day to enjoy. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less; add berries, water­melon cubes, lemon ver­bena for dif­fer­ent flavors.

Take advan­tage of all the pro­duce in the gar­den and at the farm mar­kets to make your meals “no cook,” or use the grill so you don’t heat up the house. Veg­eta­bles of all kinds can be stir fried in a bas­ket on the grill or eaten raw. Quick pas­tas are another good choice, since it requires only heat­ing up a pot of water. Throw in fresh cut veg­gies, some cheese, pasta water to thicken and you have quick healthy pasta. Sal­ads and smooth­ies are per­fect choices dur­ing this hot weather. For most smooth­ies, use fresh or frozen fruit as a base, top with almond milk, coconut water or liq­uid of your choice. Blended, this makes a great hot day drink for lunch or break­fast. I attended an herb gath­er­ing in Indi­ana over the week­end and our speaker, Stacy Walter’s favorite break­fast drink is: kale, spinach, blue­ber­ries, straw­ber­ries, coconut water, half of a banana and a mint sprig. Blend thor­oughly and enjoy a healthy, cool way to start your day.

Visit the local shops in town that sell ice cream, yogurt, Ital­ian ice and iced cof­fee or tea. An evening stroll down­town will get you out of air con­di­tion­ing for some fresh air and gen­tly remind you that cooler times are ahead.

I hope to see a fore­cast that will give us all a much needed break. Remem­ber the good old days when we didn’t have air con­di­tion­ing in our homes or cars…….how did we make it through?

Mark your calendars

The Delaware County Mas­ter Gar­dener Asso­ci­a­tion will have its annual plant sale at the Delaware County Fair­grounds from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sat­ur­day, July 28, and from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. or sold out on Sun­day, July 29. The plant sale will be held in con­junc­tion with the orig­i­nal Delaware Coun­try Farm­ers Market.

The plant sale will fea­ture numer­ous vari­eties of col­or­ful annu­als and peren­ni­als such as hostas, daylilies as well as many other vari­eties of peren­ni­als at very rea­son­able prices; selec­tion varies depend­ing on par­tic­i­pa­tion from local Delaware County nurs­eries. Mas­ter Gar­den­ers will be on hand to answer ques­tions about plant care. This event is open to the pub­lic. All pro­ceeds will go toward edu­ca­tion and beau­ti­fi­ca­tion projects through the Delaware County OSU Exten­sion / Mas­ter Gard­ner Program.

This is a great event to acquire plants to beau­tify your gar­den and help our com­mu­nity at the same time.

Susan Liechty is a Delaware County Ohio State Uni­ver­sity Exten­sion Mas­ter Gar­dener Volunteer.

Posted by Master Gardener on Jul 6 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.