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Time to face the heat

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It’s almost 9 pm and I’m gearing up to go outside and begin watering my garden.

It’s been a very hot day. It’s finally dropped down to 30 Celsius (86 F) but with humidity it’s still 36 Celsius (96.8). Wish me luck!

I didn’t water yesterday even though it’d been hot all day. We’d watered really well on Sunday evening. I figured I could let it go a day, even a hot day, but I certainly can’t let it go for two days when it’s this unbearably warm outside!

The one good thing about going out at this time is that my elderly stalker hopefully won’t notice me. If she does she’ll come and stare at me while I water. The staring isn’t so bad it’s when she talks and I can’t hear her so I have to keep stopping what I’m doing just to find out that she asked if today was Tuesday or to say “no rain, no rain” again for the third time that day.

She watched Chris and I all day Sunday when we were out getting work done in the garden. I just get irritated when I’m stared at for hours on end. Of course I then end up taking it out on my husband when he’s not who I’m mad at all.

With any luck none of my neighbors will be out and I can get the watering done and be back inside within an hour and a half at the most!

Anyone else having a heat wave?






Benefits of using mulch on the garden

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I went out of town this past weekend and I was a little worried about my garden.

You see, we are going through a heat wave here in Toronto. Friday’s temps were 31 Celsius (87.8), Saturday and Sunday were 32 (89.6 F) and 34 C (93.2 F), and yesterday ended up reaching 35 C (95 F). Now those temps wouldn’t necessarily be so bad if it were dry heat, but here in Toronto we seem to get a lot of humidity. If you add in the humidity factor the temps were well over 40 Celsius (104 F) each day. Those temps are enough to make me wilt so it’s no wonder I was worried about my plants, especially all the new ones that I finally planted last week.

I should have watered the garden on Friday seeing as we were leaving early Saturday morning but I was very tired for some reason. Not watering added to my worry. I was sure I’d come home to wilted or dead plants. Lucky for me it did rain sometime on Saturday.

I’m sure the shredded red cedar mulch that I put on the garden helped too. We covered all the bare spots between the plants with two to three inches of cedar mulch. This helps keep the weeds down. Actually- it makes them virtually non-existent. It also helps keep the soil moist too. Well, it won’t if you don’t water at all, but if you give your garden a good watering every two or three days the soil should stay slightly moist and your plants will be happy. As long as I do a good deep watering I don’t have to water every day, even during a heat wave- apparently.

We use the red coloured mulch because 1. we like the look of it, and 2. because in studies it was said to help tomatoes grow faster. We do grow some tomatoes in one corner of our garden and they do do well.

I even put some mulch on my potted plants to help them retain moisture.

Do you use mulch on your garden beds? If you do, what kind do you use? And have you noticed any difference in your garden since you started using it?

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