How to maintain your garden in intense heat!

Hi, I'm Susan. Welcome to the Foster Farmhouse. I'm here in my garden today after a wonderful downpouring of rain this morning, which was much needed. We have been having extreme temperatures. I've never, I've lived here for 35 years and I have never seen, lived here with those types of temps. I feel like I'm living in Arizona. It was 115 degrees. I think our temperature said that. It was supposedly the high of 111. We just have been having temperatures over 100 per consecutive days now. And it's supposed to get down into the 90s. Sorry for that claim. I've been doing extra watering and I'm gonna have to go around and do that this morning. I'm out here before it gets too excruciatingly hot. But I'd like to take you along. I have to do some pruning of my roses, deadheading. And I'll show you how I do that. I'm gonna be cleaning up around my hollyhocks. There's some dead leaves around and it's not good to leave dead leaves on the ground by the hollyhocks. It promotes bugs and disease. And so would you come along with me as I do some maintenance in my yard? So here I am by my little antique rose. They're miniature roses. It's a climbing variety. And as you can see, there's a lot of spent buds. And I'm just gonna go and I'm gonna clip it down to where there is five leaves. If you can see right there, one, two, three, four, five. I will clip it right before that. And I'm just gonna deadhead that. So here's another one, two, three, four, five leaf. And I'm gonna clip it right before that. And right on this stem, there's several and I'm gonna pick the one that's down here. And just go ahead and deadhead that. So that's what I'm gonna do with my roses. I'm gonna go ahead and trim them up, get all the spent roses, all the ones that need to be cut off. So hopefully there might be another flush of blooms soon. Here's my rose bush where I have pruned it. And make sure you wear gloves because they're thorny and it hurts. But I see, I left a little bit of color still on it, but there's gonna be more new buds coming on, which I'm excited. And if you prune, if you come back and deadhead your roses and clip them back to where there's like a five leaf and I cut it right, you can see right before that, I just cut it and then there's the five leaves, one, two, three, four, five, right? You know, you can take, like here's this rose and right over, let me get a good angle there. So right there, there's that five leaf. You can trim it right there. So that's how you deadhead your roses. And you can take it back down even more. It doesn't have to be the first five leaf. You can, as long as you cut down to where there's a, cause some of them only have, oh, like, let me find, some of them only have three leaves. So there, one, two, three. So you don't, you wanna cut where there's a five leaf. And so I just kind of did some maintenance and cleaned up my flower beds. I've got phlox coming on that are just starting to open up and bloom. And I have got a type of sedum that, oh, is so pretty when they bloom. And I have a clematis in here and it needs some lime. It's yellow in there and it just, I need to get some lime and put that on there to help it green back up. But I wanted to show you what the heat did to my poor hydrangeas. As you can see, this is like, I think this is, it's my second year with these. And this has gotten really big. This one hydrangea was about half the size. It's grown twice as big. And look at all the blooms that are gonna be coming on it everywhere. But as you can see, look what the sun did to it. And I have one over here that I just, it just breaks my heart, I'll show you. It's just all over, it's just burnt. But here's another one that got burned. It's a different variety and so the blooms are coming, but they haven't come on. But look what this one, and this one was more covered, but it must have gotten the most intense sunlight, but look at it. And it's right on the drip system. It was getting watered. It's just, I should have covered these. And there are blooms that were coming on. And see there, there's some blooms, everywhere there were blooms. But look, it just shriveled and it burnt it so bad. I'm so sad. I have to come and deadhead some of these roses. And I'll probably take it back down to where this five-leaf is and snip it there. This is a climbing antique rose. And I think, I bought this and I never knew to do this, but you should, I must warn those of you who go to nurseries and buy things. I think this was a host to thrips, which are very damaging to roses. I'll show you what they do to them. And it's been a constant battle since I brought it home from the nursery. And they just suck all the sap out of the blooms and they never bloom. Sometimes they bloom and they bloom all weird and they don't look right. They take all the sap out of the flowers and they never have a chance to bloom. So I'm gonna come in here and deadhead this. And I'm thinking of just, I rarely see blooms on it because it just is a host to thrips. And so I think I'm just gonna take it out. It's just, it's very susceptible to it. And I just, I don't wanna deal with it. I'm gonna get a different variety and make sure I clean up the ground and the area and do some things to help kill any of the eggs and the cycle of it. And I have to do it around all my flowers, but I wanted to show you my hollyhocks. They're just so pretty. And I love this pink. And I have a very large scale yard. And so it's nice to have some colors that kind of show up. I have this pretty white. It's got a pinkish bloom and it turns white as it opens more. It's very pale and pretty. Here's another pink, but it's kind of, it's not my favorite color. I prefer more of the pinky and the whites and the blues, but it's pretty and it's coming on nicely. And here's a delphinium ready to open. And I love this color, I'm excited. I just got done with the most spectacular delphinium I've ever seen. It had like lavender blooms and pale, pale lavender. And I cut it down. So hopefully, I probably should cut it down to here, to the ground. So I'm gonna go back in there and do that. In fact, I'm gonna do that right now. So when you see the stalks and the blooms, it's okay to just go in there and cut it down. You think, oh no, I've killed the plant. But it actually comes back up again and will grow. So I'm gonna let that have new shoots come out and we'll have another round, hopefully, of delphiniums. And my poor ferns, just kept them watered. They're right on the drip line and I also did extra watering. But they just, this heat in the sun was so intense. And it is, it has, it does have shade. There's a tree here, but it's still, even for the amount of time, look at this hydrangea. It has got some sun damage. Very sad. So this is the dianthus I think I had in my other video about a month ago. And it is all done blooming and I'm gonna go ahead and shear the top of that. I need to get that done. And oops, here is a weed. I don't want that in my garden. I have some geraniums that are starting there. And here's another delphinium that the sun just, it's on the drip and I gave it extra, but the sun just, it was a baby. I just planted it and it just couldn't take it. So I'm gonna cut it down, down to the bottom. Kind of take off all that and see if it'll come back. Hopefully it will. So I just wanted to show you how my containers have weathered through this horrible heat and they are doing fantastic. A little bit of kind of damage right in here, I noticed, but it's not too bad. And so they're doing okay. I have been keeping them well watered, watering them in the morning, early, and then I hit them again in the evening if they need it. And this one's just doing so well. So, and I have others that I showed you that I can take you over there. They're doing beautifully too. Just wanted to stop and show you, I had planted these in Patience and I just kind of started over there and they kind of border around and they're just so pretty. And I've got peppermint in here and I have this fern peonies that needs to be deadheaded. A long time ago. I gotta go do a lot of deadheading in my garden today. But this is a hydrangea and it didn't get the burnt sun because it's on the north side of the building and so of our home. And so it didn't get that intense heat just directly on it. So it weathered well and it's got some pretty blooms and it's a fire light, I believe. So a hydrangea and so I'm happy and really pleased with how this is looking. Got a beautiful hosta in here and a lilac I put in here with spearmint that's wrapping around and I need to come in here. It's gonna take over. I have peppermint over there and some catnip. I just need to come in here and trim this back. I probably should have planted it in a pot, but oh well, it is what it is and I'll have to come in here and clean it up. So here's the other pot and I just love how this bourbina, oh, it is so, so beautiful. It's a proven winners type of bourbina. I think I already told you the name of it and I don't know the, I have the exact name again. It's called sparkling amethyst super bourbina. It's a proven winners and oh, I just think it's so pretty. Anyways, they're doing great. I've been watering them a lot, like I said, early in the morning and then I hit them again at night when in the evening when they seem to need it, especially when it's over a hundred here and I just really wanted to kind of share with you, we're working on this whole area. This is all a new garden area. Again, hydrangeas, these are in the hot afternoon sun that it burnt my hydrangeas. It's very sad and these are only a year old and they were doing so beautifully and I was so happy. They look like they're gonna be getting lots of blooms and they just got, the leaves got pried but I think they'll still bloom but they're just not gonna look as pretty as they could have if we hadn't had this scorching heat and this one got the most damaged, kind of sad. I just wanted to show you like right here, I know this is not, this is all in progress but we're gonna next year be filling this area out with more of this stone. So this will be all flowers and the stone work and my cosmos are starting to bloom. They self-seeded from last year and I've got lavender in here and I have pink salvia and I've got a mock orange plant there. I have the Eden rose. Here's a, oh, I can't even think right now, but hollyhocks, it's just a baby and it looks kind of like something's on it. This is really interesting. This was pink, an Eden rose and now it's turning a yellow bloom. Does yours do that? I mean, that is really strange. They were very pink and beautiful and now those blooms have gone. You can kind of see the pink left on that and now these are new blooms and they're yellow. That's new to me. Maybe someone knows why that is. That's what Eden roses do. I don't know. I thought they were pink. Anyways, so this whole area, I wanna show you what the heat did to my beautiful clematis that I was showing you in my last video. I kept it very wet in water, but that intense heat and sun, it just couldn't take it. And clematis likes the sun, but not that kind of heat and not that kind of hot, hovering over the hundreds for days. So it just kind of fried the leaves and the blooms faded fast, very sad. Life of a gardener, you wait and you wait and sometimes things just don't turn out or they turn out and then something happens, some horrible weather or animal comes and devours everything. Reminds me of what the Bible talks about, that Satan comes to steal, kill and destroy. Anyways, I just wanted to show you. So I told you about the grass and how this heat is just really, if you look, I got brown patches all over and I haven't mowed my lawn because it's so hot and I don't wanna stress it out any more than it is. And so, but this patch is weird because I got really, really green spots and then dead spots and it makes me think that I might have some bugs in there eating it. So I'm gonna see if I see anything. Oh, I don't know, I thought I saw a little black, bugs crawling around. I just thought I saw some. So I just wanted to show you. So I had the sprinkler on this area and I think it's my soil. It's very sandy and the water just drains right through and look how dry that soil is. Not enough to keep things. It's a little moister over here but if I dig down a little bit more, it's not very moist. So I think it's just a matter of the sprinklers not getting this area very well. So I'm gonna probably have to take a look and adjust it but it could be chintz bugs because I thought I saw some little black bugs crawling around, which is a sign. And what they do is they eat the roots and the way this is so patchy, this reminds me of chintz bug damage. And they go and they eat the roots and kill it from the roots and so you have to replant. And actually, if you get it in time and treat it, then the grass roots that are still there and okay will grow and it'll green up again. I've had chintz bugs in my yard and this looks just like it. This is what it looks like. I'll show you the difference between this and then just sprinklers not getting it and I think I'm gonna have to overdress this particular area but look, it's not patchy, it's just all brown and dead. It's just sad. So I think it'll come back once I try to get it watered and I'm gonna get some soil conditioners and just something that will help keep the water, absorb the water and just keep the water in there. Keep it moist, not so much sand. I think if I top dress it, it'll help condition the soil and make it healthier to retain water better. So you can tell the difference. I mean, this started happening before we had the intense heat and it also could be brown patch. I'm not sure, it could be a fungus but anyways, when the heat's over, I'm gonna rake it up and plant some new grass seed, put down some soil conditioner, grass seed and there is something by Scott's that has all three of that, soil conditioner, grass seed and fertilizer. So I'm gonna try to use that in this area. Well, that's it. I went around and I cleaned up some of the flower beds in my yard that needed it. I got dead leaves off from my hollyhocks and raked around there because they can get more bugs and things from having dead debris around the plant. So I cleaned that up and deadheaded some of my roses so they'll bloom again and my delphiniums, cut them back down and they'll come back up with new fresh growth and hopefully some more blooms. And also I showed you around the yard and some of the things that were damaged, the hydrangeas. They just can't handle that intense heat with the sun on them. So I really should have covered them and so maybe you can learn from my mistake, get out an umbrella or something that will protect them from the sun and the heat. I watered them, they were watered but I think they just couldn't handle the sunlight. It was just too much on them. It was too hot and too intense the heat. Also the grass, some of the grass I think is because the sprinklers aren't hitting them enough and we have very sandy soil and so the water just drains out. And so with that, I would think I need to overdress the lawn in those areas with some good soil that would help retain the water better and amend it and make it healthier. And also the patchy areas where I think I do either have chintz bugs or some kind of fungus in that area and I am going to be addressing that. I think I'm gonna rake out all the dead stuff and I'm gonna be using this product from Scotts that has soil conditioner in it, fertilizer and grass seed. And I'm gonna try that and see how that works but I'm gonna wait until it cools down quite a bit because I wanna make sure that it stays wet and watered and see if that goes back. Anyways, if it is chintz bugs, I could just treat it now and hopefully just keep it watered and it'll grow back again. If it didn't kill it all in the grass, if there's any roots left because they eat it from the roots and kill it from the roots. But if there's still grass in there, it'll grow back. So I'll try to figure out what that is and keep you updated on that. I hope these were helpful tips for you today and stay cool and make sure you water your plants in the morning and at night when it's super hot and be checking them for stress or anything and cover them if they need it. Thank you, have a great day, bye.