How to Prepare Your Garden for Warmer Weather

As the days become warmer and the outdoors become greener it’s a great time to start enjoying the outside again. It’s also a great time to think about how to protect your garden from extreme heat and prepare it for warmer weather. After all, your garden is also happy that the warmer months of the year have finally arrived, but it needs some help to take full advantage of the nice weather. You might need to do some landscaping and some DIY projects to help transition your garden. 

As with any garden, particularly a winterized one, some simple tasks need to be done so that your garden is ready for the blooming days of summer bliss. This is the year of new beginnings so don’t be content to leave your garden as just a place with some grass and lawn chairs. In celebration of the good days ahead, upgrade your hot weather gardening techniques and turn your garden into a hub for nutritious veggies, blooming flowers, and majestic trees. 

Bring In The Garden Furniture

With warmer weather comes more opportunities to have fun outside. Why limit your outdoor fun to a few cookouts every year when you can have breakfast, lunch, and coffee breaks in the open air as well? You could go all out and build an outdoor kitchen or an ADU with a patio dining area. You can go for something simpler with a few pieces of charming garden furniture.  A nice scandi table and some fresh, upholstered benches are all you need to create the perfect nucleus for family fun to the soundtrack of birds chirping.

Updating Garden Furniture For Warmer Weather

Or you can go for the most popular choice this season and get some rattan garden furniture which works great in many different settings and configurations. You can find pretty much anything you can imagine when it comes to rattan garden furniture, including sofas, day beds, sun lounges, and, of course, dining tables. 

Garden Furniture That Will Make You Switch to Outdoor Living Fulltime

Optimize Your Watering Schedule 

The first ingredient for good garden watering in the warmer months is moist soil. You should try to keep the soil your plants grow in consistently moist throughout the day. This can be one of the more labor-intensive parts of hot weather gardening but is well worth it. Waiting until plants start wilting and soil starts cracking is just not a good idea if you want a healthy summer garden. If you don’t water your plants enough their health will suffer as will their productivity. To make your job easier, consider investing in a metal garden hose or even a hose reel. These can be pricey, but they will make your job a lot easier. If you have an automatic sprinkling system, adjust the times and frequency based on your climate. 

The other part of good garden watering is watering at the right times of the day. In general, you should avoid watering at high noon or when the temperature is highest because you’ll lose a lot of water to evaporation. Instead, try to water your garden in the mornings or evenings.  

https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/spinkler-garden-sunset-141674512

Build Some Windbreaks

While a nice cool breeze is always a welcome reprieve from the dead heat of summer, gale-force gusts are less fun to deal with. If the wind really picks up it can knock over garden furniture, take down flowers, plant stands, small trees, and even damage your home. The good news is that you can easily prepare your garden for strong winds. A competent windbreak can be built with some simple materials that can be found in your local Walmart. A windbreak doesn’t have to stop all the wind in order to be effective, and it doesn’t have to be a solid concrete wall or even a greenhouse.   

In fact, a windbreak can be something as simple as pallet fencing draped over your garden beds which will keep your young crops from flying away until the storm blows over. For more substantial windbreaks, you can’t go wrong with a tall cedar or oak tree. A row of tall trees can make a night and day difference in terms of how much wind makes it to your garden, and can also work wonders to shade your home from the sun. Of course, growing trees takes time, but it's a very worthwhile investment in both time and money. Not only will you enjoy a beautiful windbreak that will make your garden thrive, but shade trees can even increase your home’s value.  

Creating Windbreaks In Your Garden So that the Good Times Aren't Gone With the Wind

Use Intensive Planting

If you dream of living off of your own vegetable garden layout, free from the clutches of your local big-box store, this is the solution for you. Intensive planting transforms your vacant lawn into an efficient grid of highly productive crops. One very popular and effective method of intensive planting is known as French intensive gardening. French intensive gardening is quite popular with urban gardeners because it can greatly increase your garden’s yield. 

To maximize your vegetable yield from your raised garden beds there are some general rules for success. Firstly, you need to space plants closer together. This helps to increase output and also protects the soil from erosion by forming a leaf canopy. You can also do some companion planting where you mix in different plants on the same bed so that your crop can grow. Companion plants can help attract pollinators, insects, keep away pests, or even give shade to shorter plants. 

For example, planting tomatoes with herb plants such as basil, rosemary, or sage will keep the shorter herb plants protected by the taller tomato plants. Combine these techniques with succession planting - immediately replacing a spent plant with a new plant - and crop rotation - where you rotate between different plants on the same bed - and you’ll have the makings of a very productive garden. 

Why It's a Great Idea to Start French Intensive Gardening In Warmer Weather

Build a DIY Garden Bed

A raised garden bed looks adorable and will save you from breaking your back for all your gardening tasks. You’ll be glad to hear it’s also a very easy DIY project. It’s so easy, in fact, that you can just do it with basic hand tools (no need to get that scary power drill out). Building a raised garden bed is also a good opportunity to get your feet wet with some construction fundamentals since it runs through the basics of carpentry and outdoor DIY projects. 

Also known as a garden box, a raised garden bed is a great example of how a small addition to your backyard can go a long way towards improving the organization of your garden. You don’t need all that much to put together a whole bunch of them, but it will make your backyard much more usable. 

There are some sweet benefits to building a DIY garden bed. Raised garden beds are perfect for growing veggies, herbs, and flowers because they keep out weeds and pests like snails. A garden bed also keeps your soil from washing away in a storm and helps with draining water so your plants don’t drown. Another great thing about garden beds is that they make it possible to plant earlier in the season because your soil will be warmer. If you build many raised garden beds, you’ll have an ideal setup for square foot gardening. If you have a bad back, raised garden beds have the added benefit of reducing back strain since you don’t have to bend over as far. Because a garden bed doesn’t have a bottom, the roots of your plants can grow further into the ground where there are more nutrients. 

Garden Beds, The Perfect Summer DIY Project

Some Like It Hot

The best way to ensure the success of your garden during warmer parts of the year is to choose the right summer garden plants. Some plants are much more at home in hotter climates than others, so be sure to seek out those plants that like it hot. If you want to create a summer flower bed, keep an eye out for sunflowers, hummingbird mints, salvias, and lavender flowers. These colorful plants thrive in warmer temperatures and even do well in the dog days of summer. For those seeking to raise a summer vegetable garden, cucumbers, eggplant, corn, melons, tomatoes, and peppers are great vegetable plants to start with — they are easy to take care of and deal well with the heat. 

The Plants and Flowers that Will Survive Summer Heat In Your Garden