Working In The Heat At The Urban Garden

Well the summer certainly has turned up the heat here at the urban garden. The temperature has been hitting the upper 80’s and this weekend the 90’s. These are the days I really appreciate the 5am to 1pm shift we work. When the temperature gets hot it is time to be a little more cautious with your plants. Be sure that the ground does not dry out high temperatures promote quick drying conditions and especially for newer plantings with less established root systems it is important to keep the plants watered.

About a month ago we planted some trees and several almost immediately dropped most of their leaves. I thought that they may need to be replaced but I know a lot of times trees that are under stress from high heat will drop some of their leaves to save the  energy and moisture . We hit the trees with a dose of  a product called Super Thrive which is a combination of vitamins and supplements that you can find on the internet. We gave them two applications 2 weeks apart and they sprung right back to life and started popping buds. In fact one of the trees actually started to flower. They are all leafed back out and appear to be doing fine.

We are trimming the evergreen hedges here this week and next. It is a big chore but they recommend not to trim in any month with an R in it so that the plants have time to harden off any new growth from the trimmings before the freezing weather arrives. So as this is the last month without an R coming up tomorrow here we go.

Also I have been working on the irrigation system a lot. I have had to replace 14 heads that have been knocked off or run over in the last 3 weeks.I have to check the system almost daily as if one head is missing then the whole zone does not receive enough water. That is a time consumer when you have 44 irrigation zones to go through.

It is pretty hectic running a large grounds operation but somehow we always manage to get the big items taken care of and even find time to do the fine tuning stuff from time to time. If I just had 4 more guys. Oh well I just need 6 numbers to win the lottery guess I have just about the same odds on both those requests.