Anyone have any ideas on protection from Heat wave with urban patio plants, all my potted pepper plants were doing great till this week and now with it being 107 everyday outside, I can water in the morning and they are dry when I come home, all limp and leaves are dropping off everything. Is that the extreme heat doing that, should I just pull them all inside?
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Any ideas on protection from Heat wave with urban patio plants
- Thread starter Sawdust
- Start date
you may want to look into getting a shade cloth, it sounds like they're just baking in the sun and have no moisture. do you have any large plastic saucers you can put them in, where they can draw a reserve of water?
Yea that is what is funny Yum, I have been managing to keep the soil moist barely in time but they are still limping out especially if any sunlight hits em so I have been moving them around to avoid direct sunlight as it seems to be nuking them. I have never seen the sun this damaging before it is almost like there is no Ozone Layer. Bhut and the Hab just gave up the Ghost today! dammit!
Is their a certain "boiling" temp where the leaves just give up and separate from the main stem?
Would it help to just put a box fan on the patio all day when I am gone when there ain't no wind kinda like they do in greenhouses?
Thanx..
the fan will make their water evaporate even faster. look into a shade cloth or some sort of outdoor tent. if you're in texas, the thermometer could read 107 but in the sun with no wind, it could be up to 145 degrees (i lived in dallas and fried an egg on my balcony one day). super high temps can cause cells to rupture but I think somebody with a little more experience would be more than happy to answer in depth.
Saucers. Shade cloth. Wood blocks to lift pots off of boiling hot concrete (or styrofoam or anything with low heat conduction). You can also wrap some burlap or canvas around the pot and wet it down in the afternoon to help keep the pot and soil cool. If you have terra-cotta pots they do that evaporative cooling trick for you so no need for the burlap.
The other day I was bored and wondered how it'd work out if I were to take a big block of ice and set it on a closed cell foam mat on top of the pot, to slowly melt and water over a few hours time. Never got around to figuring out how I was going to make that many gallons of ice per day without more of an investment than a DIY drip irrigation system.
Well it was another day of extreme temps, I had too many plants before and was trying to give some away but I do not need to worry about that now as I had to toss alot today. I noticed one thing today, the plants that I have in fabric pots are not succumbing to the brown wither of death. The ones I lost all start to curl their leaves under and all the way at the top where new growth is would get a mottled brown color to the leave and then eventually fall off, now these were all in standard black plastic nursery pots. I am suspecting that the black plastic pots are not breathing enough and the roots are boiling that is why the fabric pots even though they are black as well are not affected yet and still healthy in 107 degree temps because the air exchange is much better. I suspect the roots are cooking even though the soil is moist! I think I am going to order alot of fabric pots like Grow-Pots and put what I have left alive in them. I even saw a gray one in a 20 gallon size which would be a lighter color in respect to heat absorption.
Oh well Live and Learn!
Be Well and thanx for the replies, ya'll..
Oh well Live and Learn!
Be Well and thanx for the replies, ya'll..
Like I said, evaporative cooling. Fabric or un-glazed pottery.