Help Your Garden In Summer

If the summer is especially dry, the garden suffers. With these tips for planting, watering and maintaining your garden, you can prepare it optimally. A dry summer often leads to great damage in the garden. The plants suffer from lack of water, dry up or become more susceptible to plant diseases and pests. Also, the expenditure, which garden owners have with the care and above all the irrigation of the garden, rises. And that during the holiday season. We will tell you how you can prepare your garden for dry summers with simple means so that the plants can survive heat and dryness undamaged.

Which garden plants can survive a dry summer?

Many of the plants are not doing well in summer. They evaporate too much moisture, but cannot get enough out of the soil. However, there are a number of so-called drought-tolerant plants. They save hobby gardeners some effort on the really hot days.

These characteristics distinguish plants that survive dry summers in the garden:

• Small leaves: less evaporation
• Hairy leaves: prevents dehydration
• Silver/grey foliage: reflects light and heats up less
• Rough, leathery-hard leaves: have additional protective cell layers
• Succulents: store water in their leaves
• Deep roots: reach with their roots also water in deeper earth layers

Soil preparation and optimum planting time

Very important is also to choose optimum planting time and soil preparation is of greater importance.

n fact, the right planting time can do a lot to prepare the garden for a dry summer. The first step is to prepare the soil for heat, drought. A high humus content in the soil improves the water retention capacity so that the soil can store significantly more water. This is an important measure before dry summers, especially in sandy soils. As far as plants are concerned, it has proved successful to plant hardy plants in autumn, evergreens in late summer or spring. The reason for this is that in this way the plants have grown well up to the hot, dry summer months and thus suffer less damage. This is especially important with large plants such as trees and shrubs that are not inexpensive.

Proper pouring or smart watering integration

The next important point is the proper pouring. In dry summers it is difficult to ensure watering in the garden according to demand. In smaller gardens, it is often enough to take a few simple points to heart when watering. Watering takes place only in the early hours of the morning – the dewy soil absorbs the water well and dries well until the evening when the snails become active. In addition, the cool water does not cause a temperature shock, as the soil has not yet heated up as much.

In dry summers you should always water thoroughly and abundantly. If watering too sparingly, plants will form fewer roots, all of which are in the uppermost layer of the earth. Fatal in a drought!

If you don’t have much time for garden maintenance or are planning an extensive summer holiday, it is worth integrating an irrigation system into the garden. A great advantage, for example for the successful cultivation of fruit and vegetables. Smart irrigation works fully automatically and irrigates only when the plants really need it – saving money and protecting the ecology. All settings and the entire watering plan can be easily adjusted remotely via the app. For example, you can start or stop irrigation spontaneously or ask for the next irrigation date.

Another possibility for garden irrigation in dry summers is an own cistern. If the classic rain barrel has long dried out due to lack of precipitation, there are still sufficient reserves in the underground rainwater reservoirs to supply the plants with sufficient water. On average, a cistern can collect 4,000 liters of rainwater. This is enough not only to get your garden through the dry summer well but also reduces the costs for private water consumption and protects the ecology.

Garden care tips for dry summers

In the vegetable garden or in the generally, it is of course particularly annoying when the harvest is ruined by a dry summer. Regular chopping and loosening of the soil protect the plants. On the one hand, water is not lost from sudden rain showers, as they occur from time to time in summer, because it expires. It seeps into the soil and benefits the plants. In addition, chopping prevents water that is present in deeper layers of the earth from evaporating unused. Also very beneficial for plant health and harvesting is the fact that air is supplied to the roots thanks to tillage and nutrients are released.

The ornamental garden can be well prepared for dry summers by mulching the beds. A soil cover in the form of bark mulch reduces evaporation and prevents dehydration. Anyone who feels visually disturbed by mulch or its individual smell in the garden can also apply a layer of gravel to the beds.

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Source: mein-schoener-garten.de

Photo by duskbabe