It’s time to water your landscape plants. Mother Nature has been pretty stingy with rainfall these past couple of years, and the subsoil is now pretty dry.
In normal times when the surface soils dry out, subsoil moisture is available to gradually percolate up, or be drawn out by the large root systems of established plants. Subsoil moisture is now low enough that it may be inadequate even for plants with big root systems.
The simplest way to help out these plants is to put out a sprinkler and let it run in each area of your landscape for 2-4 hours. This will not be enough to replenish subsoil moisture, but it will certainly be a start and a big help to all of the plants. If you were to do this every 3-5 days, you’d probably have some effect on subsoil moisture3 over time.
These types of supplemental watering, in extremely dry times can be especially beneficial for plants growing on your property that are marginally zone hardy.
It’s not only dryness that is affecting the vigor and appearance of area plants. Wind tattering of young tender leaves during last week’s horrible wind storms has left many trees and shrubs looking tired and frayed. The leaves will look brownish at first, but as time goes by the damaged leaf tissue will fall away, leaving the plants with the appearance that bugs have been eating on the leaves.
Leaf tatter is ugly but is not serious damage. If you fertilize and water your tree, new growth will emerge and hopefully this new growth will mature and thicken before the next brutal wind event. If new growth covers the outside of the tree, it will cover some of the leaf tatter and the tree may improve in its appearance for the remainder of the growing season.
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