It’s HOT! At least it is now, while I’m writing this. I sincerely hope that by the time you’re reading it the heat wave will have broken, it will be considerably cooler and we will have had some nice, long, slow rains to cool us off and give the poor plants the water they so desperately need. But I still have to write this now, so here goes.
While it’s hot you know it’s important to keep your plants watered, but how often and how much? How do we accomplish this in view of the water restrictions so many of us are facing now?
First, remember that one deep watering is much more effective than multiple, short, shallow waterings. When we water a little bit, as with a hose in the hand, or a sprinkler set for 10 or 15 minutes, it gets the top layer of soil moist. That encourages new roots to
What to do instead? Water long, slow and DEEP. This encourages new roots to develop deep in the soil so when the shallow surface layer dries out, the plant is in good shape, with its roots deep in moist soil. Applying about an inch, or in this heat maybe an inch and a half or even two inches, once a week will keep your garden healthy. Water VERY early in the morning, before 6 if you have an automatic system, or as early as you can get out there if you have to do it manually. Watering at ground level prevents a lot of water loss to evaporation, and puts the water at root level where the plants can use it. It also avoids wetting the foliage which can lead to disease under the right conditions, so if you have soaker hoses, use them. If not, you can do what I do and lay a hose on the ground with the water turned on low to medium – not a strong force, you don’t want to create a gully – then just let it run for about 30 minutes. I set a timer and keep going out to move the hose. Over the course of the day I can quite thoroughly get a great deal of the garden watered.
There is just one caveat though, everything I said above applies to plants in the ground. Plants in pots are totally different. Plants in pots have nowhere for roots to go looking for water. In pots there is no ‘deep’. Pots have to be watered when they get dry - period. Test by sticking your finger into the soil; if it feels dry, water. In hot weather pots may need to be watered daily, sometimes twice if it’s hot and windy. The only way to tell is to test. After a while you will become good at determining how often to water. Another way is to feel the weight of the pot after it has been thoroughly watered. It feels heavy. Then, as the water evaporates, the pot gets lighter and lighter. With a little practice it becomes easy to lift the pot and determine that it needs water. It keeps your finger clean, too.
Since I wrote the above I looked at the forecast and saw that we are supposed to have a 60% chance of rain today and over each of the next five days. Maybe, maybe not. 60% chance it will rain where you are, 40% it will not. I hope we all get some good rain, but the information about watering is good to know anyway. When I got home from the Board meeting it had rained a little here. HOORAH!!!
Can you plant now? Yes, but… It will take extra work to plant when it is this hot and dry. Especially with delicate seed, like carrots, it will require extra vigilance on your part to make certain that the seeds and seedlings are never allowed to dry out. Until the middle of September you can continue to plant bush snap beans, English peas, Irish potatoes and pumpkin. Any time during September you can plant beets, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, Chinese cabbage, carrots, cauliflower (transplants), Kohlrabi, lettuce, mustard, radish, shallots and turnips. September is your last chance to plant collards until next March. Starting in midSeptember you can plant onions and leeks.
Onions are interesting plants. First, they are biennials, so it takes two seasons to go from seed to seed and those seasons are divided by winter cold. Onions are also photothermoperiodic – isn’t that a great word? It means that onions are affected by both day length and temperature. Starting from seed, the onion germinates at soil temperatures of 55° to 75°. The plant grows, then when the daylight hours reach a given length (which is variety specific) the plant stops growing leaves and starts forming a bulb (this is the ‘photo…periodic’ part of the word). Then when the plant is exposed to temperatures of 40° to 50° (again, variety specific) it stops making bulb and begins forming the flower (called ‘bolting’). This is the ‘…thermoperiodic’ part of the word.
So varieties perform differently depending on day length. There are actually three groups of onions, short day, long day and day neutral. Short day onions will begin to form bulbs when the day length reaches 10 – 13 hours. These are good for us. In the north, the days get long early in the spring when it’s still cold causing the plant to form tiny bulbs. Growers in the north need to plant long day onions, ones that don’t start making bulbs until the days reach more than 14 hours. It’s warmer then and they can get a good crop. Here, our days never reach 14 hours, so planting long day onions will result in a really disappointing crop. No bulbs at all. Unfortunately, most onions are long day type, so you have to make certain that you’re getting short day or at least day neutral varieties.
The Ag Center recommends the following reds: Red Creole, an open-pollinated heirloom that can be used to save seed, and Southern Belle, a short-day hybrid. Never save seed from hybrids. They do not breed true. For whites: Candy and Savannah Sweet, and for yellows: Granex 33, Grano 520 and Texas Grano 1015Y.
You might also find local offerings labeled ‘Texas Sweets’. These are Granex under another name. Onions have small root systems so it’s very important to make sure they get regular nitrogen before bulbing starts. This means supplying them with nitrogen regularly. If you’re using chemical fertilizers, the Ag Center recommends fertilizing onions and shallots with 4-5 pounds of 8-8-8 or 3-4 pounds of 8-24-24 per 100 foot row four to six weeks after transplanting.
Other varieties recommended are beets: Detroit Dark Red, Kestral, Red Ace and Ruby Queen. A beet that I like a great deal is Cylindra, a Danish heirloom. Each root is normal beet width, but instead of being round they are long like a carrot, giving a lot of uniform slices from each root. Various seed companies describe it as 5 to 8 inches long. Of course that depends on when you harvest it. I’ve grown it every year since I discovered it, both here and in Arizona, and I’ve gotten excellent yields in both locations. It tastes great, too; in fact its other name is Butter Slicer, it’s that smooth. The greens are not just edible, but delicious both raw and cooked.
For carrots the Ag Center recommends Danvers 126, Purple Haze (this one has purple skin and orange flesh), Deep Sails, and for deep soil, Apache, Enterprise, Maverick and Navajo. I also like one called Purple Dragon; this one has purple flesh with an orange core and there is another that I just discovered called Dragon – it’s solid purple. I haven’t tried it yet, but I will be doing so soon. I’ll let you know how it handles in the garden as soon as I know myself. Burpee offers a mix called Kaleidoscope. It contains white, yellow, orange, red and purple varieties. I actually bought that mix a couple of weeks ago at a local produce store. It looks beautiful in the bowl and on the plate and tastes just as good as it looks, so I have high hopes for the seed.
Until next time, Good gardening
While it’s hot you know it’s important to keep your plants watered, but how often and how much? How do we accomplish this in view of the water restrictions so many of us are facing now?
First, remember that one deep watering is much more effective than multiple, short, shallow waterings. When we water a little bit, as with a hose in the hand, or a sprinkler set for 10 or 15 minutes, it gets the top layer of soil moist. That encourages new roots to
What to do instead? Water long, slow and DEEP. This encourages new roots to develop deep in the soil so when the shallow surface layer dries out, the plant is in good shape, with its roots deep in moist soil. Applying about an inch, or in this heat maybe an inch and a half or even two inches, once a week will keep your garden healthy. Water VERY early in the morning, before 6 if you have an automatic system, or as early as you can get out there if you have to do it manually. Watering at ground level prevents a lot of water loss to evaporation, and puts the water at root level where the plants can use it. It also avoids wetting the foliage which can lead to disease under the right conditions, so if you have soaker hoses, use them. If not, you can do what I do and lay a hose on the ground with the water turned on low to medium – not a strong force, you don’t want to create a gully – then just let it run for about 30 minutes. I set a timer and keep going out to move the hose. Over the course of the day I can quite thoroughly get a great deal of the garden watered.
There is just one caveat though, everything I said above applies to plants in the ground. Plants in pots are totally different. Plants in pots have nowhere for roots to go looking for water. In pots there is no ‘deep’. Pots have to be watered when they get dry - period. Test by sticking your finger into the soil; if it feels dry, water. In hot weather pots may need to be watered daily, sometimes twice if it’s hot and windy. The only way to tell is to test. After a while you will become good at determining how often to water. Another way is to feel the weight of the pot after it has been thoroughly watered. It feels heavy. Then, as the water evaporates, the pot gets lighter and lighter. With a little practice it becomes easy to lift the pot and determine that it needs water. It keeps your finger clean, too.
Since I wrote the above I looked at the forecast and saw that we are supposed to have a 60% chance of rain today and over each of the next five days. Maybe, maybe not. 60% chance it will rain where you are, 40% it will not. I hope we all get some good rain, but the information about watering is good to know anyway. When I got home from the Board meeting it had rained a little here. HOORAH!!!
Can you plant now? Yes, but… It will take extra work to plant when it is this hot and dry. Especially with delicate seed, like carrots, it will require extra vigilance on your part to make certain that the seeds and seedlings are never allowed to dry out. Until the middle of September you can continue to plant bush snap beans, English peas, Irish potatoes and pumpkin. Any time during September you can plant beets, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, Chinese cabbage, carrots, cauliflower (transplants), Kohlrabi, lettuce, mustard, radish, shallots and turnips. September is your last chance to plant collards until next March. Starting in midSeptember you can plant onions and leeks.
Onions are interesting plants. First, they are biennials, so it takes two seasons to go from seed to seed and those seasons are divided by winter cold. Onions are also photothermoperiodic – isn’t that a great word? It means that onions are affected by both day length and temperature. Starting from seed, the onion germinates at soil temperatures of 55° to 75°. The plant grows, then when the daylight hours reach a given length (which is variety specific) the plant stops growing leaves and starts forming a bulb (this is the ‘photo…periodic’ part of the word). Then when the plant is exposed to temperatures of 40° to 50° (again, variety specific) it stops making bulb and begins forming the flower (called ‘bolting’). This is the ‘…thermoperiodic’ part of the word.
So varieties perform differently depending on day length. There are actually three groups of onions, short day, long day and day neutral. Short day onions will begin to form bulbs when the day length reaches 10 – 13 hours. These are good for us. In the north, the days get long early in the spring when it’s still cold causing the plant to form tiny bulbs. Growers in the north need to plant long day onions, ones that don’t start making bulbs until the days reach more than 14 hours. It’s warmer then and they can get a good crop. Here, our days never reach 14 hours, so planting long day onions will result in a really disappointing crop. No bulbs at all. Unfortunately, most onions are long day type, so you have to make certain that you’re getting short day or at least day neutral varieties.
The Ag Center recommends the following reds: Red Creole, an open-pollinated heirloom that can be used to save seed, and Southern Belle, a short-day hybrid. Never save seed from hybrids. They do not breed true. For whites: Candy and Savannah Sweet, and for yellows: Granex 33, Grano 520 and Texas Grano 1015Y.
You might also find local offerings labeled ‘Texas Sweets’. These are Granex under another name. Onions have small root systems so it’s very important to make sure they get regular nitrogen before bulbing starts. This means supplying them with nitrogen regularly. If you’re using chemical fertilizers, the Ag Center recommends fertilizing onions and shallots with 4-5 pounds of 8-8-8 or 3-4 pounds of 8-24-24 per 100 foot row four to six weeks after transplanting.
Other varieties recommended are beets: Detroit Dark Red, Kestral, Red Ace and Ruby Queen. A beet that I like a great deal is Cylindra, a Danish heirloom. Each root is normal beet width, but instead of being round they are long like a carrot, giving a lot of uniform slices from each root. Various seed companies describe it as 5 to 8 inches long. Of course that depends on when you harvest it. I’ve grown it every year since I discovered it, both here and in Arizona, and I’ve gotten excellent yields in both locations. It tastes great, too; in fact its other name is Butter Slicer, it’s that smooth. The greens are not just edible, but delicious both raw and cooked.
For carrots the Ag Center recommends Danvers 126, Purple Haze (this one has purple skin and orange flesh), Deep Sails, and for deep soil, Apache, Enterprise, Maverick and Navajo. I also like one called Purple Dragon; this one has purple flesh with an orange core and there is another that I just discovered called Dragon – it’s solid purple. I haven’t tried it yet, but I will be doing so soon. I’ll let you know how it handles in the garden as soon as I know myself. Burpee offers a mix called Kaleidoscope. It contains white, yellow, orange, red and purple varieties. I actually bought that mix a couple of weeks ago at a local produce store. It looks beautiful in the bowl and on the plate and tastes just as good as it looks, so I have high hopes for the seed.
Until next time, Good gardening
MaryAnn Armbruster, Ph.D.
Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview.
RSS Feed