When summer simmers

Summertime and the living is…hot and sweaty. — Lima Andruska/Creative Commons

It’s high summer, I figure, when the black-eyed Susans bloom, the phlox is in flower, and the tomatoes are ripening on the vine.

But is the heart of summer all we imagined back in the cold, still depths of winter? Back then, we dreamed of shedding our cold-weather wardrobe and spending our days in shorts, T-shirts and flip-flops, reveling in the sun.

Now that we’re doing just that, it’s clear that we conveniently forgot how sweaty and enervating a stretch of extreme heat and humidity can make you feel. Broiling and steaming should be cooking techniques, not how you feel every time you step outdoors. It does no good to recommend air conditioning to outdoor people like gardeners, since no matter how nice it is to cool off, you’re still inside. Bummer.

During these runs of 90+ days, it’s just too hot and drippy to work up much enthusiasm for deadheading the dahlias and tying up the new tomato shoots. Merely watering the potted plants could make you break a sweat, but what’s the point of having container specimens if you don’t water them when it’s hot to the point of cruelty? One does what one must.

While we were wilting, plants that love the heat were soaking it up. All the warm weather crops — tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, corn — are growing at astounding rates in these sweltering temperatures. The coneflowers and sunflowers, roses and phlox don’t seem to mind when the weatherman says it will “feel like” 102. Bully for them.

Tropicals like it, too, when temperatures head for the triple digits. Canna, hibiscus, brugmansia and mandevilla feel right at home in the blazing heat. I’ve never had such success with my canna as this year, when my black-leafed ‘Tropicana’ is standing 6-feet tall and producing the most outrageous red flowers.

On the other hand, some species don’t appreciate blazingly hot and humid conditions at all. Fuzzy, silver-leafed plants like lamb’s ear suffer a serious meltdown, and annuals adapted to cooler weather go into a sulk. My nemesias have stopped blooming, and most look fried to a crisp no matter that they have been faithfully watered and fed. What can you do? They may (or may not) revive when temperatures relent.

I’m amazed at how well certain plants are doing without much help from me. Along my driveway is a planted strip remote from the taps and not easily watered. It is here that I am growing some things with succulent leaves, like sedum, Montauk daisies and euphorbia, which get by on very little more than rain, however haphazard it may be.

Tropical hibiscus revel in the heat. Other plants not so much. — Sheba/CC

But on the whole, like most gardeners, I am a slave to the watering schedule since if my plants croak I don’t want it to be clearly my fault. Every day without fail, I make the rounds of the container plants — the bunch on the wide stair to the lawn, the group clustered on the back stairs, the collection on the terrace. Without me, they’d be goners.

For things in the ground, though, it is a far better thing to water regularly but not daily, deeply and not casually.

If you pamper your garden with daily, light spritzing, you’re encouraging the roots to remain close to the surface rather than seeking moisture in the soil below. Sure, it can make you feel useful to stand there with a hose in your hand, but you’re not really doing yourself or your plants any favors.

A more effective idea is to have soaker hoses or adequate sprinklers in place and to let them run for as long as it takes to moisten the soil to at least six or eight inches. The amount of time it takes will differ depending on whether you have light, sandy soil or dense, heavy clay. Do this every third or fourth day if it doesn’t rain, and you will be bringing up plants with a bit of resilience — plants that won’t expire if you go away for a long weekend.

I am happy as a clam with a pair of “Hi-Rise Lifetime Brass Sprinklers” I bought for my garden ($70 from Gardener’s Supply Company of Vermont). Simplicity itself, these are 5-foot-tall copper and brass stanchions with a step-on spike and hose connection at the bottom and a spray fitting at the top that puts out a circle of gentle “rain” up to 30 feet in diameter. Look, Ma — no moving parts to jam or clog, unlike certain oscillating sprinklers I have known, and the spray, thrown high above my tallest plants, is very even.

In about two hours, I can soak the garden to a trowel’s depth and be done with it until three days hence. I can retreat to the porch and sit in the shade, in front of a fan, with a tall glass of lemonade and feel I am doing my duty to the garden.

Some days, only mad dogs and tomatoes should be out in the noonday sun. Some days, you can actually find yourself looking forward to fall.