The sun, sullen, sultry, molten, relentlessly sucks gaping cracks in the baked earth. Forest shade turns breathless, stifling. Breezes are cherished; hot, drying winds despaired. Faded is the avian Ode To Spring, subdued to ceaseless cheeping from fledglings begging food.
Gardening tasks become slow motion perspiration choreography; saturated air fogs glasses. It's summer. Summers are supposed to be hot.
Climate and Weather
Is it hot enough for you, yet?
It certainly is for me! Like my plants, I droop when the temperatures soar. Weather, even for those living and working in air conditioned cocoons, is something everybody thinks about, talks about and bitches about.
Weather varies from season to season and year to year, but major climate changes take at least thirty years and generally hundreds or thousands of years to evolve. The weather our particular climates give us is something we can't control.
The climate in my USDA zone 7 garden is generally hot in summer - high 80's and low 90's F (31 - 33 +/-C) are to be expected, especially in July and August. Usually, rain in the form of thunderstorms as well as good gentle soaking rain, occurs every week or so. But, recent years have seen drought conditions and extremely hot temperatures. Temperatures remain stuck in the upper 90's F (36 +/1C), with some days in the 100's F (37+C), accompanied by high humidity and no rain. We're in our third year of less than normal rainfall; fish are dying in streams and farmers are losing their crops.
We're not alone, either. This was yesterday's weather map from my local paper. It shows most of the US sweltering, with daytime highs ranging from the upper 80s to over 100F (31 - 38C). Around here, it's not cooling down at night, either.
Extremes of heat or cold are stressful to both plants and gardeners. Some plants (and some gardeners) adapt successfully and some don't.
Heat Stress
Extreme heat is stressful, and, like extreme cold can kill both people and plants by causing physiological changes that can't be reversed. Unlike freezing, the results of which can usually be seen immediately, heat stress can weaken plants, causing effects that aren't noticed until much later, such as flower bud drop the spring after a hot, dry summer.
Heat stress can also be seen as it occurs. Plants droop, leaves crisp and fall prematurely, new growth, particularly on coniferous trees, shrivels and turns brown because it isn't actively involved in transpiration and can't cool itself during hot spells in late spring or early summer. Much plant growth seems to stop. Plant diseases flourish; weakened plants become bug fodder. Most of these symptoms are also drought related.
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