Please Be Careful in the Heat
Let’s find some shade to talk. This is what I always say to my spouse when we are conferring in the garden. When I last wrote, it was about planting trees for cooling relief from heatwaves and indeed, the early summer continued on at the sweltering end of the thermostat, making shade so prized in the garden. Thankfully our area (so far) has been spared the wildfires happening in other places in the state, and in other parts of the U.S. West, and parts of Canada…and the Brazilian rainforest …and on and on. Sigh. A welcome break in the weather is bringing relief now — with the temps back down in a comfortable zone.
Whether or not a heatwave was a good time to finish reading the climate change book The Heat Will Kill You First, by Jeff Goodell is one I cannot answer, but it certainly drove home the central theme that heat is not something you mess around with.
So, I’m writing this as a reminder to myself, my spouse and loved ones, as well as any of you gardeners who need a refresh on this.
Heat stroke can be deadly for anyone, so please don’t push your luck out there in the garden or anywhere. Here are guidelines for Extreme Heat Safety by the Red Cross. It’s one of those things we hear all the time and perhaps we don’t give it the attention it deserves. I’ll attach a helpful chart at the bottom from the CDC about what to look for and what to do regarding certain symptoms.
Of all extreme weather conditions, heat is the most deadly. It kills more people in the U.S. in an average year than hurricanes, tornadoes and floods combined.
NPR–How Heat Kills: What Happens to the Body in Extreme Temperatures
Heat illness can cause permanent damage to the body too. “Heatstroke requires emergency treatment. Untreated heatstroke can quickly damage your brain, heart, kidneys and muscles. The damage worsens the longer treatment is delayed, increasing your risk of serious complications or death.” (Mayo Clinic)
Heat illness is a grave concern, more so as temperatures keep breaking new record highs so please gardeners and everyone–and I say this to myself and my spouse too–let’s be careful.
A checklist for gardening in the heat
In extreme heat, avoid working during the middle of the day; utilize the cooler morning or evening hours. As I get older and tire more easily, I also just garden in short bits of time, with frequent breaks indoors when it is hot. (Yale Med)
Drink about a cup of water every 15-20 minutes, or about 3/4 to 1 quart every hour while working in the heat. (CDC)
Avoid alcohol (as it can cause dehydration) as well as energy drinks or too much caffeine as these can add to the strain on your body during heat. (CDC)
Wear a large sunhat (Iowa St–Managing the Garden in Extreme Heat). My everyday garden hat has a wide brim of 5 1/2 inches (I think it is this one from San Diego Hat Company if anyone is interested. It is very hard-wearing, has good sun protection but is hotter than ultra light-weight sunhats. But this one has enough structure to keep my face covered on windy days, unlike some of the lighter ones. I modify it to put a fabric strap through to keep it from blowing off.) For quick trips outside in extreme heat I use my extra large brim of 8 inches. It is too big for functional work, but is crucial at times.
I’ve noticed that one drawback from the decomposed granite paths we have now is the reflected sunlight back up from the ground. I can’t verify this, but I’ve started wearing a head mosquito net under my hat to give a little more skin protection from this reflected sun. It’s also handy to keep flying debris out of my eyes as our wind seems to have increased here. You could sew one, but I got mine from REI.
Protect your eyes! Wear sunglasses labeled with UV400 to block 100% of UVA and UVB rays. (Tufts Med)
Keep the skin covered with lightweight, loose, breathable fabric. I appreciate some of the more in-depth articles on this topic now, like this one from the BBC which includes a look at fabrics. I also appreciate the traditional wisdom from cultures who’ve lived long in extreme heat in terms of dress. Long, loose fabric creates a kind of venting, which cools the body. This won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but for myself, I’ve added a couple of long-sleeve, free-hanging, maxi dresses in lightweight linen to my closet for those days in the 90 to 100+ degree Fahrenheit range (about 32 to 38+ Celsius). I can’t always find my size in a fabric I like, so I was glad to discover linenbees on Etsy where there are lots of options.
Oh yeah, and sunscreen of course. I’m negligent about this as I dislike the stuff. I use it grudgingly. Hopefully you are more responsible than I am on that score.
I begged my spouse to follow these heat safety tips recently as he was harvesting the lavender during some very hot days. Heatwave or not, he always looks so happy when he harvests the lavender. Must be the aroma and the happy bees all around.
What is growing in the food garden — that the deer haven’t eaten yet
It has been a near-daily effort to save our food garden from hooved marauders this year. The telltale footprints and other remnants left behind show which garden beds they have indeed visited. Those deer have been eating everything in sight.
They hard-pruned the blueberry and raspberry plants, ate the tops off the beets and carrots and other veg, and absolutely devoured the tomato plants–several times over! There is plenty of forage for them in the fields but of course they, like us, prefer the juicy stuff.
We kept trying to shore up the exclusion tactics and they kept trying other ways and succeeding. Our gardens are fenced but they can jump pretty high when they want to. Fingers crossed we have now fortified against ingress. Even so, we’re keeping many of the garden beds individually netted—having wrongly thought before that the veg were safe. With these set-backs, the long-suffering tomatoes are only just starting to set fruit.
Our cherry trees normally fruit at the same time as the lavender is ready, and it was a bumper year on two of our trees. We filled the freezer and also called a friend to come and help themselves.
It was a relief to have that abundance of cherries because there were basically no berries to harvest. The birds ate all the mulberries this year and the deer—well, you know.
As I’ve mentioned before, because of the rampant gopher population here, we have to plant our veggies in raised beds with gopher wire on the bottom–which means space is limited. So, I like to inter-crop as much as I can. It’s a matter of cramming in as many herbs, pollinator-friendly annuals and butterfly nectar flowers as possible–with the occasional splurge of a cut flower.
Since the corn bed is only 10’x10′, I try to make sure we get a good kernel count by hand-pollinating the silks. We’ve given the corn some of the fish pond water that is collected when we purge the filter–the veggies love that liquid fertilizer! Last year we were lucky and no raccoons harvested the corn before us. Hopefully we’ll be lucky again this year.
It was a good spring for the pipevine swallowtails. Most of them have gone into chrysalis stage now, but we still see a few of the gorgeous black butterflies. It’s amazing how far they will crawl to find a space for their chrysalis! There is one on our garage wall that must be at least 130 feet from their main pipevine (aristolochia californica) caterpillar food source!
There have been a few anise swallowtails. I have some fennel in the corner of a garden bed and it looks like one of the butterflies found it, as I spotted a caterpillar and then a chrysalis followed.
The beets and beans are only just starting to recover from the deer mauling, but the cucumbers and zucchini are starting to fruit.
My favorite new veggie–new to me anyway–is mizuna! I got the seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds: the “Mizuna Early”. Great as a salad in itself with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, or added to a lettuce salad with perhaps come cucumber or maybe some sliced apple. It can also be stir-fried. I’m not a big fan of very peppery greens but this one is rather mild and I love it. I also love that I can harvest it many times over without it bolting–it gives a lot with low input. It’s also low growing, so I can inter-plant it with taller plants. This will be a new mainstay veg for us as it is also very nutritious.
I look forward to catching up with my garden blogging friends and see what adventures have been going on in your part of the world. And a hello to those of you who follow my garden musings here but may not be online journalers yourselves. Thanks for hanging out!
If you haven’t yet, please consider going Peat-free in your garden and in your houseplants!
As promised, here is a reference chart from the CDC on Heat Illness. Click the image to visit their site. Remember, stay hydrated in the heat!
P.S. Two things happened while I was finishing this post. One was that while I went to stretch my legs for a short break in the garden, I spotted a pipevine swallowtail on a tithonia and took a photo for you.
The other was that as I was typing the final parts of this post, my computer made a weird click, the screen went black, and a dubious electronic odor began wafting from it. And the computer felt hot. Should I be superstitious that it flamed out while writing a post about heat-related illness?
So I’m attempting to finish this post on my iPad. Please forgive any weirdness. 🙂
Hope you will visit again at the website and blog of The-Compulsive-Gardener.com!
Talk about the heat. We had 27°C today. In September! In Finland! Climate change – what a joy. You have a lovely garden. (I just googled 27°C in Fahrenheit and it would be 80)
Goodness! That’s hot for Finland! Yes, climate change. Sigh. Thanks for the kind word about the garden and thanks for visiting and commenting. 😊
Hi Lisa,
I hope your computer did not self-incinerate and that you and your spouse aren’t overheating either. It sounds as though you are taking all proper precautions! Thank you for sharing your tips.
Your garden looks lovely, despite being under siege from deer and gophers. We relented a few years ago and fenced in our back yard with a fence tall enough to keep out deer because they were eating everything we were trying to raise (we only grow food for birds, bees, and butterflies). It felt a little mean but by keeping out the deer, the resultant growth has created a haven for other creatures.
Wishing you relief from the heat as well as a good late summer and fall harvest,
Tanja
Thanks Tanja! My computer did indeed self-incinerate, but luckily the backup had been working and I’m just now getting a new computer up and working. I’m glad you were able to create a deer free zone for your other habitat space. How wonderful that you provide that for the birds, bees and butterflies! I hear you about the difficult choices we have to make to create balance between the various wildlife, but it seems necessary. Thanks for the good wishes and I hope the same for you too! -lisa
Now that I’m reading your lines, I wonder if we have discussed your failed computer before, it sounds vaguely familiar. If so, my apologies (my memory leaves something to be desired). If we haven’t discussed it, I’m sorry about what happened. But I’m relieved that your backup worked! And I hope your new piece of equipment will be easy to use and live a long life.
You are right about some gardening choices being difficult. We really agonized about shutting out the deer but by so doing, we created an oasis for other wildlife.
Happy gardening,
Tanja
My memory leaves something to be desired too, and given the nature of computers, it’s quite possible I’ve discussed a kaput one previously with you before, but I also don’t recall. LOL 🙂
At least we will never run out of topics to discuss if we don’t remember what we have already talked about. 😊
😄 Quite so!
Beautiful!
Excellent points re heatstroke. It never ceases to amaze me why people still sunbathe in the mid day sun. IT is not just the heat it is also the UV. My family from the UK come on holiday and despite my nagging they just don’t get it.
We went to stay with my daughter in France last year and the temps were in the 40c – a fluke. None of us could breath as there was no air and they did not have air con. the tick we do here is to close the shutters before the sun comes up and only open windows outside when the temp is far lower than the inside.
Yes, thanks for mentioning the UV. I sunbathed my first time in Hawaii and still have facial skin spots to show for it. Ugh about the 40C day…that’s intense. Especially in a place that isn’t used to it and doesn’t know how to cope. We get those sometimes here in California too. I’m with you on your tip about opening the windows at night (shutters in your case) to let the night air in, then closing up when the sun rises, to keep the house cool. Works very well. Thanks for that great reminder for everyone! It’s late at night here now, but in the morning I’m going to have fun catching up with you and everyone else I enjoy following. -lisa