Episode 69 - Heatwave Plant Tips!

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:22]Hello everyone, and I hope that you're well.

[00:00:25]We have just had a couple of blisteringly hot sunny days here.

[00:00:30]Temperatures got up to about 35.

[00:00:33]Um quite worried about the plants, but hopefully I put in place some strategies which would stop them from becoming sunburned. So, I thought this would be a good opportunity to share those tips with you.

[00:00:47]There's no chance of being able to sit down in my garden at the moment. These are all tomato plants.

[00:00:53]Um that's some broccoli there that are due to go up over to the allotment.

[00:00:59]Um whilst it was so hot, I decided I wouldn't plant them up. Um it was easier to keep them shaded and watered here.

[00:01:08]But they are pretty desperate to go out now.

[00:01:12]I can give you an update on my planters.

[00:01:14]I think it was a couple of videos ago that I was planting these up. Um you can see now how much they're filling out.

[00:01:24]The lobelia is beginning to grow enough to start to hang over the edge. It still got some work to do yet, but it has certainly begin to cover all of the liner, which is what I want.

[00:01:38]Switching to my hostas here.

[00:01:41]This, again, is a regular occurrence in my garden.

[00:01:45]Um squirrels plant and well, they bury their nuts, and then they forget where they are.

[00:01:54]Well, I assume they forget where they are.

[00:01:56]So, I get left with them with a little tree, little tree sapling there.

[00:02:06]I never got to come out and make a start on wood treating the greenhouse um over the bank holiday weekend. It would have been pretty foolish to park myself out here in those temperatures.

[00:02:19]So, it's still on the list.

[00:02:25]And the Sally clematis here, uh which was the new one, has just flowered. Absolutely beautiful.

[00:02:40]Excuse me.

[00:02:42]Where are you going?

[00:02:44]Lily is rather grumpy this morning because she found herself in the greenhouse for most of last night.

[00:02:51]Unbeknown to me, she'd made a little bed in the box.

[00:02:55]And um yeah, thankfully it was cooler.

[00:03:03]The rambling rose has now finished, which um is always a shame, but it did put on such an amazing show.

[00:03:11]But thankfully um other plants are now coming out.

[00:03:15]This beautiful white one down here, which every year I forget the name, but I'll pop it on the screen for you now.

[00:03:22]And up until yesterday, I had a gorgeous red peony, um but that seems to have lost its petals overnight.

[00:03:33]Some tips for keeping your plants protected from the sun, uh this extreme weather that we're having here in the southeast. This is by far one of the easiest ways to protect your plants from uh the sun is to use a garden umbrella.

[00:03:50]Um they're larger. You can use a normal regular umbrella over smaller plant pots. But just by positioning this and moving it throughout the day, you can protect you can protect a great deal of plants.

[00:04:04]So, watering in the morning is ideal because that way um there's ample um moisture in the soil before the really high temperatures of the afternoon kick in.

[00:04:17]This is an example of um sun scorching on the uh base of this clematis here.

[00:04:25]Now, it's my fault. I didn't include it under the umbrella shade yesterday.

[00:04:30]Also, which I failed to do, uh it's on my list, was to put bedding plants around the base of it.

[00:04:38]Uh they recommend this with many clematis.

[00:04:41]Uh my issue here is I've absolutely got this one in the wrong size pot.

[00:04:46]But it's the wrong time for me to change that.

[00:04:50]So, um for the moment there's um the stones at the base, but I will make sure I shade that.

[00:04:58]You can apply some bark chipping as a mulch at the roots of your plants.

[00:05:03]Uh this will definitely stop them from drying out as quickly.

[00:05:09]So, companion planting, so placing uh taller plants next to smaller plants which will then offer them the shade as the sun goes round.

[00:05:21]Also, it's a good time to do the washing of all your sort of bed sheets, duvet covers because if you've got a washing line, stick those on and that will create some shade.

[00:05:40]I hope that's been helpful and until next time, make sure you take care now.

[00:05:45]>> Oh.