Summer is the season when heats hit the peak and rainfall becomes erratic, which means gardeners often have to put in extra effort into taking care of their garden to ensure a plentiful harvest. Summer garden care is centered on a few strategies that are quite easy to implement, and if you want to take good care of your garden, make sure you check them out before the thermometer hits the boiling point.
Use Summer Annuals to Add Some Color
Once summer heat sets in, many beautiful plants such as viola, pansy, and osteospermum will quickly fade. To make your garden look charming during summer, you’ll have to pull out dead plants and replace them with new ones. When choosing new plants for your garden, you should go for heat-loving species such as zinnia, coleus, salvia, lantana, and sweet potato vine. These plants fare well in heat and will quickly spice up your garden with a chic burst of color.
Water Your Vegetables More Often
When the weather turns hot, you’ll have to start watering your veggies more often than usual. Watering the garden two or three times a week is an absolute must for most gardeners during summer heats, and you should soak the soil well so that water can reach deep roots. The best way to make sure water soaks the soil thoroughly is to put a small can in the ground and keep pouring water in it until the water level inside the can reaches least 2.5cm. In case you keep your veggies in pots, you’ll have to water them daily. Also, try to avoid getting water on the leaves to minimize risk of leaves getting dry or your plants contracting a disease.
Watch Out for Pests
Gardeners often don’t realize there’s a serious problem with their greens until they detect holes in the plants. If you watch your garden carefully every day, you’ll be able to tell if there are any pests or parasites on the plants. Make sure you watch out for beetles, slugs, and grasshoppers as they can pose a real threat to your plants’ health. If you notice pests in your garden, make sure to remove them from the plants. You can use the tip of your trowel to eliminate creepy crawlies from your veggies, but if you want to exterminate them and not just remove them, you can set out a saucer of beer: this will attract most pests and allow you to drown them in alcohol.
Keep an Eye Out for Indicator Plants
The indicator plant is the first plant that starts to wilt as your garden turns dry. Once you find the indicator plant, make sure you water it whenever its leaves start to droop. Common indicator plants include melon, cucumber, and squash, which have big leaves that tend to lose moisture fast. There’s nothing to worry about if the indicator plant begins to dry: even the best gardeners get caught off guard by wilting plants sometimes. If you notice droopy plants in your garden, it’s time to water the entire garden and soak the soil well.
Start Pruning
Inexperienced gardeners often feel bad when they cut flowers from the garden. Still, by pruning some of your flowers, you’ll be actually doing them a huge favor. By deadheading both spent and fresh flowers, you’ll encourage the plant to produce more buds. If there are any trees in your garden, make sure to prune the branches regularly, but don’t put the cut twigs together with your standard waste. If you live in Australia, you can get skip bins in Penrith and have waste disposal professionals take your green waste to the recycling center for you.
Your garden will require extra maintenance during the summer but it’ll all be worth it when the time for the harvest comes. Make sure you inspect your garden carefully every day and deal with potential plant-related problems as soon as they occur.
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