The Three Best Things To Get Your Plants Ready For Fall After A Hot Dry Summer
A great summer to go the beach or be on vacation but not a great year to be a plant. Many plants even with irrigation are dying or have collapsed. A lot of plants are dead or severely damaged.
What can you do to help your plants to survive this fall/ winter and wake up healthy next spring?
Water or better yet deep water
Water is the most important thing for plants. When you have so many hot days without any rain the soil and more importantly the plants dry out. By the time you realize the plants are dry its almost too late. It is almost impossible to get the water to percolate into the soil.
Water will not get absorbed into the dry soil and runs off
Traditional watering with a sprinkler or hose will just run off. Mayer Tree can inject hundreds of gallons deep into the soil. We have had great results doing this. Although we do have people ask us “pay you to water my trees”? Yes, we realize that is a strange concept but the cost of replacing your landscape plants or removing dead trees is a lot more expensive This watering can mean the difference between your plants being healthy or anemic or alive or dead..
Fertilize
Besides water fertilizer is the best thing you can do for your plants. In our modern landscapes, there is almost no nutrient cycling
We remove all the leaves and twigs and do not allow this organic matter to go back into the soil. We use bark mulch which is treated to be resistant to decay. What that means to your plants is as they grow the soil becomes drained of the important soil nutrients. Mayer Tree service has different liquid fertilizers that we can use to deliver essential soil nutrients deep into the soil. Our arborists can help guide you to the best fertilizer for your plants. These fertilizers can be applied this fall to help abate the drought stress and increase their vigor when they wake up next spring. This can have a huge effect on increasing plant health.
Mulch
Mulching is a wonderful thing to help keep plants healthy when done correctly.
Unfortunately applying too much can actually be detrimental to plant health. It can cause roots to grow up through the mulch or create a moisture barrier that will exacerbate the drought conditions.
Warning Do not mulch if you have not watered. The limited rain we have received is better than nothing but not enough. If you dig a hole under a tree or shrub it will most likely still be very dry. Due to the extreme hot and dry temperatures we experienced this summer it will take weeks of rain to get the soil moisture back to normal. Adding mulch without watering a head of time will make a barrier to the rain getting to the dry soil. However, if you can deep water and get the soil wet again mulching is very helpful.
Mulch helps to keep the soil moist; it helps to insulate the soil. When the cold weather comes mulch allows the soil remain moist and warm. If the soil temperature is at 40 degrees or greater roots can still grow. With the extreme hot dry weather, a lot of the hair roots that do most of the absorption have been killed. If we can get water into the soil and mulch when the cooler fall weather comes the roots can recover. If the soil remains dry and is not insulated by a layer of mulch if we have a cold winter even more plants will be damaged or killed especially evergreens.