NORTH LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Is your backyard getting crispy?
If you've got plants that are turning brown and shriveling up — you’re not alone! Record hot temperatures this summer have proven to be too intense for even native plants used to our desert environment.
“We’ve lost a lot of trees to this, like 15 year old trees," Wendy Wilson, General Manager for Garden Farms of Nevada, told Channel 13.
At the Community Garden in North Las Vegas, struggling plants are on full display.
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Wilson said it's not just the 110+ temps that bother the plants, it's the relentlessness back-to-back-to-back nature of this year's heat extremes.
“The length of time is what the difference is. Usually they can recover if just one day and a break. But we’ve seen day after day these record-breaking numbers, it is hard on the plants," Wilson said.
Many of us probably have the instinct to increase the amount of water our plants get when we see them drying out, but that may not be the right approach.
“A lot of plants are dying from over-watering," Wilson said.
Here are a few tips to heat-protect your garden
- Instead of watering more, give your plants bigger drinks less frequently to encourage deeper root systems
- Providing nutrients to the soil
- Add partial shade or plant taller trees next to shorter plants to build a micro-climate
- Prune dead leaves and branches to encourage healthier stalks
“It’s not just customers saying it, it’s really us feeling it," Moon Valley Nurseries General Manager Matthew Fichera, told Channel 13.
He said the company has been receiving calls from customers all summer long about struggling landscapes.
“They’ll call in and they’ll say their tree is struggling, we usually ask them to come down to the nursery," Fichera explained that on any given day, there could be a number of factors impacting plant health.
“If you fertilize when it’s too hot out, it can burn the plants. So it might not be a water issue," Fichera said that in the heat, “[The plant] really goes into shock, it's not growing, it's shocked out, and it's kind of stalled."
“One thing you can really do, is you can feed your plants and use soil conditioner to get through this hard water that we have here… and give it long deep drinks of water," Fichera said.
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