What a season it was… extreme heat and drought. Having ripe tomatoes and peppers should have been easy this year; some other things were not as easy.

The #1 problem I saw was starved plants. I could easily spot them driving by a yard at 35 mph. Maybe if plants exhibited more symptoms like people or animals, such as ribs showing, we would be more in tune to their needs. But their symptoms can be just as obvious if you learn what to look for. The most common sign is the foliage lacking that good, rich color. Other signs are lack of flowers, stunted flowers, or spindly growth.

When summer heat is forcing you to water twice as often as normal (especially plants in containers), their food is being leached out twice as fast. Hence, you should be fertilizing twice as often! Just think of the Tomahawk city baskets. They were as lush as ever and nothing magical was done to them, just lots of food and water.

How do we keep our plants healthy and well fed? Our “Free Fertilizer Saturdays” is one way to accomplish this. The demand has grown so strong that in midsummer, we installed another hose so people wouldn’t have to wait as long. We now have many regulars every Saturday filling up many buckets for their gardens and planters. It’s fun to chat with them and hear of the success they are having because of this service. Using a slow release fertilizer like Osmocote with liquid feeds is greatly helpful.

Learning the difference between plant varieties is also critical. Wave petunias, supertunias, dragonwings, and fuchsias are examples of heavy feeders, whereas tuberous begonias are light feeders. Another suggestion is to grow more drought resistant plants to simplify your plant care. Some good choices include portulaca, zinnia, flowering vinca, and dipladenia to name a few. We are also introducing a new line of succulents for outdoors that we have high hopes for.

The last topic I’d like to touch upon is insects. Bugs love heat and therefore thrived this year. spidermites were probably the most troublesome on flowers. They are very hard to see with the naked eye and when they are finally discovered, there are thousands. Know the varieties they like: hibiscus, mandevilla, flowering vines, and many more. Spraying them with a strong stream of water is safe and very effective, but you must do it often in the heat.

We never know what a season will bring. The more knowledge and tools we are prepared with, the better off we and our gardens are.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 10th, 2006 at 11:14 am and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.