Water! Water! Water!
It’s gotten really hot out there, so while you’re hanging out at the pool or finding other watery ways of keeping cool, don’t forget your hard working plant friends in the garden. They are going to need some extra love with the garden hose at this point of the season.
Can’t be around enough to make sure your garden is hydrated? No problem, you can always use a watering timer to help you out with that.
Plant problems?
Have you noticed brown leathery spots appearing on the bottoms of your tomatoes or peppers? This is called blossom end rot and means there is a calcium deficiency in your soil. Sudden extreme heat and growth spurts can cause your plants to redirect nutrients to the leaves, essentially starving the fruit. Heavy rainfall can also wash the calcium away from plant roots. The solution is simply to add fertilizers that are rich in calcium to replenish the nutrient content of your soil and remove all the affected fruits.
Diatomaceous Earth!
With the hot weather and the productive season of your vegetable garden gaining momentum, you may also begin to see pests that think your lovely healthy plants look pretty tasty. Slugs, snails, aphids, leaf-hoppers and other pesky bugs can be controlled by dusting your plants and soil with diatomaceous earth. It is important to do this during a period of dryness to avoid it being washed away and wasted by rainy days. While this is an excellent natural repellent to damaging insects, it can also keep away insects that are beneficial to the garden, so be sure not to over-use it.