Gardening with Pat Duke: How to beat the heat

In the Garden

It’s been an unconventional summer thanks to the unrelenting dry conditions and lack of water. This has left us with dusty beds albeit a welcome break from weed growth. The answer to most things in the garden right now it seems is water. The drought conditions have also had a significant impact on trees and shrubs that are withering or dying without water. The hedges however seem to be going mad after a torrential March.

Help is at hand in late summer when conditions are cooling down and there might be some rain in early autumn to create ideal conditions to drop in trees from a pot and give them a start.

One issue here is that you’ll need to know the final estimated size of the tree, so plant it in a place where it can thrive without impacting too much on the greens fragile ecosystem. A tree will take up a lot of nutrients and this can weaken nearby plants. Roots can grow through a lawn or even a concrete path over time.

Garden centres are filled with pot grown trees now because they also know it’s that time of year. Once you ve chosen your tree, keep it watered in the pot before planting with the top of the rootball just below the surface. Water the hole and spread its roots out to give it a good opportunity to set root. Watering it well for the first year or so will be the best service you can offer it. This will promote healthy roots that go deep in search of the water. Dropping a bucket of water or even feed on it twice a week will reap rewards. This will keep the tree stable and prevent wind rock which is damaging to their long term chances, as will staking it at an angle.

When choosing think in terms of scent, fruit, leaf colour, size and flowers. Some trees offer all these throughout the year at different times, offering something new every season.

On the Plot

The same arid conditions are ensuring that watering judiciously morning or night is par for the course. The only surprise is that a hosepipe ban has nt been put in place.

Whilst it’s time to harvest most veg right now, outdoor tomatoes and chillies are racing against time to absorb the sunlight they need to ripen. As days will get shorter the more you ll be thinking about green tomato chutney. Cut back anything like shrubs or foliage that’s preventing sunlight reaching them and wash any glass or remove plastic protection. Keep feeding twice a week but only in the morning to prevent blight.

Courgettes will keep going for a few weeks yet but keep a look out for baby ones hiding under the leaves . Trim the leaves and you ll have more in no time. Like bananas they keep better with some stem left on.

Your onion sets can go in now as they need almost a full year to reach maturity. The goos thing about them is that once established, they ll require very little care at all apart from some careful hand weeding here and there.

Give the compost a quick stir with a fork to ensure it breaks down evenly. If it looks a tad dry then just add a sprinkling of water as microbes need some moisture but don’t soak it unless you see evidence of the dreaded rats. In this case soak it as they hate that. Pretty soon you ll be turning the bins out onto the beds so it’s important to quality assurance check things out now to ensure black gold in November.

Time away from weeding can be given over to thinking about water catching systems you could rig up over anything that has a roof. This will make life so much easier especially if its near to thirsty plants.

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