Keeping your indoor and outdoor plants thriving during the summertime and heat waves can be stressful. We're here to help you save time, energy and help keep your precious plants hydrated and happy!
Our best tips for keeping your houseplants and garden happy in hot weather:
Houseplants
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Hydrate your Soil with a nutrient rich drench that has long lasting benefits! When you alleviate hydrophobic soil you don't need to worry about your plants getting too dry too quickly. The stress of dehydrated roots can be devastating to the overall health and longevity of your houseplants. Adding Sacred Soil Tonic to your watering ritual simultaneously hydrates, and stimulates root growth and resistance to stress.
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Spray those Leaves not with just water, but with moisturizing botanicals like fresh aloe vera and kelp that help minimize dehydration and maximize a healthy glow! Just as we apply moisturizer to balance the hydration in our skin, so too our houseplants benefit from a hydrating mist with Sacred Leaf Tonic.
Outdoor and Garden Plants
1. Water deeply
As soon as you wake up, with a cup of coffee or tea in hand, get to hydrating! Early morning is the ideal time to water deeply as it allows time to penetrate the soil deeply to keep it cool throughout the day while giving the plants time to dry off before nighttime temps drop again. Wet leaves at night encourage fungal disease growth so its best to leave them dry before heading off to bed. The goal is to water deeply, for longer amounts of time-not just a sprinkle, but instead, a nice, long drenching.
Why is drenching so important? Two reasons, first when you water your plants more deeply, it gets past the top soil and hydrates where it is most accessible to the root system. Second, it keeps the overall temperature of the soil cooler for longer as the sun bakes the top layer of soil and dries it out but takes much longer to affect the soil beneath. We recommend you water your garden and most houseplants (with the exception of cacti and succulents) a few times a week during the long, hot days of summer.
2. Mulch
Adding a few inches of mulch on top of the soil not only keeps the weeds away, it also feeds your soil while it breaks down plus it keeps your plants hydrated for longer. For outdoor plants and your edible garden use any of these natural materials: straw (not hay as it contains seeds), dried leaves, bark chips, grass clippings, and compost. Small decorative rocks, sand, and moss are wonderful ways to top off and help retain moisture for your indoor garden and houseplants too!
Another method of mulching is to add other smaller plants or edibles like our Edible Flower Mix or Wild Garden Lettuce Mix around your taller plants to create ‘living mulch’. You can plant Sedum and smaller succulents that spread well around your houseplants and ornamentals and for your edible garden too! Which leads us to the next tip...
3. Underplanting
When you place shorter or vining plants like bush beans, lettuce, radishes, zucchini, strawberries or spinach, under larger plants like tomatoes, sunflowers, or corn, you not only create a more aesthetic garden, you’re also boosting bio diversity, increasing food production while helping smaller veggies stay cooler during the heat of the day. This method of understory planting helps taller veggies like tomatoes and corn soak up the heat and direct sunlight they need to thrive while keeping soil covered to stay hydrated for longer and cooler.
Another trick is using shade cloth outside in your garden and lowering the shade inside for your houseplants.
As temperatures rise and many days hit 100 F (38 Celsius) preparing for the heat helps extend garden harvests . This type of heat wave isn’t too concerning for the houseplants but the garden, a few hot days can cause your crops like lettuce and spinach to bolt.
What happens when your crops bolt? It means they quickly go to flower and then to seed and generally speaking, become less delicious. One year we had over 100 heads of lettuce bolt within a week after a few surprising days of extreme heat. Everyone in the neighborhood had salad for dinner!
Throwing a quick shade cloth tent up during those days helps keep your crops cooler and can prolong your harvest.
Stay cool friends and keep growing!
Karina and Team SE