Texas A&M Agrilife Service in Angelina County helps residents protect gardens during excessive heat

ANGELINA COUNTY, Texas (KTRE) - Dawn Stover, Agronomist at the USDA East Texas Plant Materials Center, said there are ways to help protect your garden during hot, dry weather in East Texas.

Stover said, “We really water deeply and frequently to encourage root systems to go down into the soil and find cool more available parts in this world, but it’s just so hot right now we want to water just a little bit more.”

Watering smarter and more efficiently is important when maintaining the life of your garden.

Elaine Cameron, Master Gardener said, “My goal is to get things to live through the heat and drought. They may not look the best, but I’m working on watering.”

Cameron says it is a challenge for gardeners to keep their gardens and landscape watered when it is extremely hot outside.

“I’m not doing any heavy-duty gardening right now, basically, the watering takes all my time,” said Cameron.

Stover suggests watering at least an inch of water per week, but with current heat conditions she says watering twice would be best.

“For your existing shrubs and trees and perennials and annuals and things, water early in the morning. Use drip allegation irrigation. Try to start collecting rainwater and using that as a backup if you have to,” she said.

She says now is the time to just think about preparing for planting whether that is planting for wildflowers or landscape.

“And then we can do things right, get everything planted in the fall and the spring and have success because we’ve taken our time to do things right,” said Stover.

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