5 Gardening Mistakes to Avoid During Hot Weather

[Music] [Music] what is going on everyone welcome to another very exciting episode and a very hot one right here ah he on my gardener Channel I hope you guys are gonna enjoy this one because I'm roasting it out for you guys so there's a 92 degrees right now this week is supposed to get up to 103 and it's not even August yet so it can only get worse from here but it is super hot and that actually prompted me to talk about five mistakes the gardener's make during hot weather this is something that I'm learning you know I've learned from personal experience I just want to share with you guys to prevent you from making the same mistakes and there's something that I think all gardeners can relate to at some point in their gardening life so I want to jump right into it because it's way too hot to be out here they actually have heat advisories out and the cicadas are going crazy and it's time for me to be back in the air conditioning it is hot so let's jump on into it the first most common gardening mistake that so many people make during hot weather is watering your plants do not need as much water as you think they do and I know that is a common thought that you know if I need to drink water to stay cool my plants do as well but the fact of the matter is your plants are actually going to tell you if they need water or not and in our case here the leaves are super taut they're nice and thick they're very rigid they're not drooping they're not curling they're just really healthy and they seem stress free so for me I don't need a water because of that because I see that they're fine if I had to water I would water in the very early morning if I have to water I typically get up around 5 o'clock 5:30 well before the Sun rises get my plants all watered to give the water a chance to soak down through the soil irrigate the plants relieve them of that that stress and then when the hot weather comes they'll tolerate it the worst thing you can do is water during the heat of the day or when it's hot out because the soil the surface soil is bone-dry and it heats up really hot I mean it's it's hot to the touch it's probably 90 to 95 degrees just on the surface if you pour water on the soil on the surface of the soil the water is going to absorb that heat and it's going to travel on down through the soil and you're going to end up cooking your plant roots it's one of the fastest ways to kill your plants is just by watering them during hot weather so just don't do it or wait to the very early morning when you can water safely the next most common gardening mistake that I see being made is planting seeds during hot weather you see this is an issue because as gardeners we hear all the time that seeds need warm soil to germinate however warm soil is different than hot soil one of two things is gonna happen when you plant seeds in hot weather usually hot weather coincides with the dry season and if you plant seeds during the dry season you might water this but then when the hot Sun comes out you'll just dehydrate it and seeds will actually have really poor and very spotty germination if they go from you know damp to dry the damp to dry it too damp to dry they will not germinate well and if they do germinate the seeds the seedlings are very very small and they're being exposed that super hot Sun and very high temperatures they're just gonna fry and bake in that Sun just like we talked about when you're watering watering your fully mature plants that soil surface is really hot despite you know despite you thinking that your plants can survive this has a lot of perlite on the surface and it's still probably 80 to 85 degrees it's very warm and so one way that you can alleviate this problem is by starting with starts you know will start seeds in little cell trays just like we would indoors in the early spring and will transplant them now obviously beets these have already been started but we started these about three weeks ago before the hot weather came and these are well up but we're not gonna start any seeds until after August because August is the hottest month of the year for us here in Michigan and all we're going to do is just be fighting mother nature the third most common mistake I see gardeners making during hot weather is fertilizing now you might wonder to yourself how on earth fertilizing could be a mistake however during hot weather your plants kind of shut down they actually reserved their energy because hot weather anything over 90 degrees causes plant stress so they kind of just shut down and go dormant until the cool weather arrives and when you fertilize what happens is the roots send a signal to the plant saying hey I've got nutrients I should probably take advantage of these while they're here while they're available and so the plant will start growing again however growing is not just taking up nutrients it actually requires a lot of energy and the plant expels that energy that it normally wouldn't want to during hot weather and so if you give them a lot of nutrients in the form of fertilizer it can often cause them to grow and stress in a time that's already stressful and what can happen is you can actually over stress your tree by fertilizing or well any plant but this plant in particular we're not fertilizing this a lot of people have asked are you gonna give it more ignite more nitrogen and the answer is no this peach tree could use some nitrogen it's very very yellow and that just happened because we had such we had such a wet spring a lot of the nutrients leached from the soil and it's looking a little yellow but there's no way in the world I'm going to fertilize it right now because it's actually doing far better off than it was in the early spring it's just kind of going dormant during this hot this hot period and once the weather breaks then we'll fertilize and we'll be way better off I guarantee if we were to fertilize this right now it would probably be a death wish for it so just don't fertilize during hot weather and remember that anything over 90 degrees is considered stressful for your plants even hot weather and hot loving plants like peppers and tomatoes really don't enjoy it over 90 degrees so just keep that in mind and don't fertilize the fourth mistake I see so many gardeners making during hot weather is handling pests you see it's Japanese beetle season right now and I see a ton of gardeners that are handling Japanese beetles viii is white flies spider mites tomato hornworms it doesn't matter what it is the only safe method of pest control is manual removal if you come in here and spray regardless if it's an organic pesticide or an inorganic pesticide doesn't matter it will it will actually stress this plant out even more it's exactly the same as fertilizing an already stressed plant you know if this if the plant is is needing nutrients don't fertilize it because you're gonna cause it to be more stressed if the plant is stressed because of high temperatures and and insects are honing in on that stress and starting to eat your plants let the plants go until the hot weather dies down and then spray the past because the the fact of the matter is is no matter how many pests you have they're not going to just decimate your plant over the course of a couple days you know they'll do some damage I mean there's a few leaves in here that look like Swiss cheese but the plant as a whole is like 98 percent intact there's not a whole lot of damage but if I and say and freak out and say I have to handle these pests right now I'm gonna do way more damage than the passes well to be perfectly honest with you so do not use pesticides whether they're organic or inorganic during high temperatures the only thing I'd ever recommend doing during high temperatures is manual removal just come by with with a butterfly net and and scoop them up this even applies to using water a lot of people will use high-pressure water to spray off Athens and things like that on their plants this is a very big mistake because of the fact that anytime you get water on the leaves during height during high temperatures the Sun will use the water as a magnifying glass and you'll end up burning your leaves so don't even use water it's the most organic pest control option out there that you could spray in your plants this is just h2o water and it can end up killing your plants so just do not handle pests during high temperatures unless it's a manual method and the fifth and final mistake I see a lot of gardeners making during high temperatures is letting ripe fruit sit on a plan this is something that I've definitely made the mistake of and sometimes we say well if I'm not gonna use it right away I'm just gonna let it sit on the plant because it'll stay fresher longer if it sits on the plant and yes this is true it definitely will stay fresher longer because it's attached to the plant it's receiving water it's receiving nutrients and the ripening process is not happening as fast as if you pick it and move it inside however if you have a ripe tomato for instance we have a couple here on on these plants here I got to get them off it can apply to beans zucchini tomatoes peppers it really doesn't matter if you have something that is ripe and it is ready to come off the plant get it off the plant during high temperatures because the fact that the amount of energy it takes to keep this fruit on the plant is way more is way more stress then the plant actually wants to undergo it actually causes a ton of stress to keep growing producing and holding all this fruit on the plant so come through once a day in the early morning you know right when you're doing your watering chores as well in the early morning come through pick up and pick off any fruit that's you nearly right but it's blushing obviously you leave it on but if it's right if it's ready to go don't keep it on plant pick it off and let the plant actually continue to rest because that's what it really wants to do it does not want to hold all this fruit on the plan the fruit is a way of reproduction the fruit is a way for it to reproduce create viable seeds and that takes a ton of energy to hold that on the plant so get it off and your plants are gonna actually thank you for it because it's going to it's actually going to be way less stress on the plant so there you go there's five mistakes that gardeners make during high temperatures I really hope that you guys enjoyed I hope you learned something new I'm gonna go inside and cool off get some water because it is hot all right grab your home everyone bye

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Views: 201,624

Rating: 4.9230165 out of 5

Keywords: five, heat, migardener, Premiere_Elements_2018, summer, gardeners, hot weather, growing, garden tip, heat wave, mistake, top 5, gardening, mistakes

Id: vQvemf6pSTI

Length: 9min 47sec (587 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 19 2019