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It has been hot and miserable here, too. Add to it a horrible storm with tons of tree pieces everywhere and gardening has been a killer. My Hydrangea has been holding up, as well as the rest of my shade/part shade plants like Astilbe and Heuchera nearby, but that's because I have been hand watering them. Today I was ready to just keep the hose on me instead of them. I look forward to slightly cooler weather next week but worry about the kind of storms that they will bring along. Many of my plants have developed pretty good deep roots and haven't needed too much watering and the garden doesn't look as bad as you would expect after all the heat but it has been work nonetheless.
Got home this afternoon. The hydrangeas had wilted, but after pouring a few buckets of water on their roots they seemed to have perked up again. Yay!
ours perk up every night pretty much, but by mid day look like poor little old ladies again. Of course the blossoms are all gone. Because of the heat we didn't get as many blooms this year. We did get a litle rain today and are supposed to get more tomorrow and Monday. I sure hope so, the temps dropped from 101 to 83 in about an hour.
I have to say with this drought I've decided to do a little selective survival of the fittest, with just a few of the plants I inherited from the previous owner. For one glaring example, hostas planted where they get full south/west sun (So many people seem to do this! I'm no gardening expert but I think hostas are for shade is pretty basic). In normal summer weather they tend to start getting crispy. I was about to water them yesterday and I thought, why am I wasting my time and water when they should really be replaced with something more appropriate (I just dread doing it because they're in river rock and I know from trying to move hostas in the past that it's hard to get all of them anyway.)
If only the drought would affect the houttuynia she planted. Getting rid of those for good is looking like a lifetime project for me.
I have to say with this drought I've decided to do a little selective survival of the fittest, with just a few of the plants I inherited from the previous owner. For one glaring example, hostas planted where they get full south/west sun (So many people seem to do this! I'm no gardening expert but I think hostas are for shade is pretty basic)...
I thought so, but there are hostas (h. plantaginea) which can do ok in full sun. These are the hostas w/ fragrant flowers. The nozzle on my hose broke, so I'm going to be schlepping buckets of water across the field.
I was wondering if I should prune my shrubs to help protect them from this extreme heat. But after finding this thread, I won't prune them.
Some of my shrubs are slowly wilting/dying and no amount of water seems to be helping. I water them in the evening. Things that get a bit of shade seem to be doing better than others.
My neighbor put a huge tent-like thing over one of her garden area's.
Do you think they're dying not from lack of water but from the extreme heat?
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I look forward to slightly cooler weather next week but worry about the kind of storms that they will bring along. Many of my plants have developed pretty good deep roots and haven't needed too much watering and the garden doesn't look as bad as you would expect after all the heat but it has been work nonetheless.
I won't prune them.
