Posts Tagged: heat

Cooling the Garden Landscape

It's Autumn!  As we shift to cooler weather, take time to evaluate your garden's damage and stress caused by this summer's extreme heat. This is the perfect time to devise long-term cooling and shading strategies to reduce sun and heat damage in the...

Are Your Tomatoes Feeling the Heat?

It's hot. Tomatoes like heat, right? Actually, tomatoes like warm weather, between 65 and 85 degrees. When temperatures soar past 95, tomatoes stop growing.  In that kind of heat, their flowers fail to pollinate and instead they dry up and drop off,...

Healthy tomatoes on the vine. Maureen Matt

Healthy tomatoes on the vine. Maureen Matt

Lawn-pocalypse! Surviving Drought

Ah, summer! The season of sunburns, pool parties, and… lawn droughts. If your once lush, green carpet now looks like a crunchy brown doormat, you're not alone. Let's dive into why your yard is staging a dramatic death scene and what you can do to...

Bermuda grass and weeds overtaking drought stressed turf grass.

A patch of former lawn, mostly dead, with a few green weeds and Bermudagrass

Mitigating Heat Damage in the Orchard

It's hot and many trees need help in the heat.  There's several ways you an help, however many require prior preparation:

?Successful Irrigation is crucial for cooling, both unser-canopy and over-canopy  Using the Irrigation systems strategically will achieve best results ?

Mulching tree berms, also improves soil and tree health ?

Monitoring – Soil moisture and air temperatures ?

The use of Protectants(reflectants) products can be used to alleviate the stress of heat, usually provides a few degrees relief ?.  Antitranspirants can make it worse by shutting down stoma and reducing cooling transpiration

Cover cropping and hedgerows increase humidity and evaporative cooling. 

Watch a video produced by the CA Avocado Society for what can be done in preparation and now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7EWU0tAMVY

 

heat damage to new avocado

The Heat. The Butterflies. The Butterfly Guru.

Don't expect to see UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus Art Shapiro monitoring butterflies on the 4th of July. There's a good reason why. Shapiro has monitored the butterfly populations of central California since 1972 and maintains a research...

A cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae, nectaring on lavender in a Vacaville garden on June 24. Next Wednesday, July 4, promises to be a scorcher at 106 degrees. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

A cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae, nectaring on lavender in a Vacaville garden on June 24. Next Wednesday, July 4, promises to be a scorcher at 106 degrees. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

A cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae, flutters its wings, ready to fly. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

A cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae, flutters its wings, ready to fly. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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