Like Glenn Frye wrote in his famous 80’s song, in Zone 9 “The heat is on”!
I went into the garden this morning, around 9:00 AM, to water the plants and perform any maintenance needed. I quickly found myself sweating from just the effort required to pull a few small weeds. That is when I realized, yes, the heat is on!
Because of the heat and intense sun I decided to add another task to my list… Add shade cloth over a few of my plants. One of my raised beds is exclusively ever-bearing strawberries. Historically they have not produced well during the heat of summer, only surviving the summer, and then producing for a short period in fall before they go dormant. So I stretched a piece of 50% shade cloth over some PVC pipe above the bed. We shall see how this works!
After accomplishing all my goals for the day, I was finishing my time in the garden off by watering all the plants when I decided to turn the hose on myself ! Very Refreshing!
Here is some recommended reading for this summer:
This has been a blog post from our Managing Editor: Dan Hagan
