Extending the Life of Your Summer Garden
The overwhelming majority of gardens look their most impressive in the summer whether they produce flowers, fruit or vegetables, the same is probably correct of your garden. When the garden looks so pleasant and the weather is fine, it is nice to spend more time outside.
There are two ways of approaching this: you can try to extend the growing life of your garden by say a few weeks or a month or / and you can extend the number of hours you can sit in the garden every day. By taking both routes you will get the utmost pleasure from your summer garden.
The first thing you can do to extend the life of your summer garden is construct some raised growing beds. Raised growing beds heat up more quickly and cool down more slowly than a growing bed in the soil. This is because the brick walls of the raised beds will absorb and hold the sun’s heat, warming the soil faster and retaining it.
It will also chill down more slowly as winter approaches because frost comes up from the ground and your raised beds will be that much higher so the chill will have to travel further. You can also strive to heat these raised beds artificially if the first frost has not yet arrived. Apply the heating to the walls of the beds.
You may find that the expense of heating the flower beds is not worth the money, but if you have a special function on just at that period of the year when the weather usually takes a change for the worse, you may think the cost worth it to have a beautiful floral display for that special day.
Raised growing beds are categorically the best route to take, but if for some reason you cannot construct some raised beds, you could give your plants a head start by planting them in pots ahead of when the first frost is forecast for. if you have a greenhouse, you will be able to get even plants commenced in this way. Then, you could transplant more mature flowers outside when the weather permits. This will extend the life of your summer garden to the fore a little.
Another way of extending the garden’s summer life a little is to cover the plants over at night. However, you have to keep an eye on the plants, because these covers are very effective. You must be able to remove them before the sun heats up or your plants may cook. You cannot go to work in the morning and leave your plants covered over all day.
The second way to get more enjoyment from your summer garden is to stretch the number of hours per day that you can spend outside. This is easily achieved with exterior lighting. You can either run electric wiring to your garden and have lighting installed or you can use solar powered lighting, which will save you money on installation and running costs.
Once you have enough lighting, the only other things you might have to have to extend the life of your summer garden are a mosquito lamp and a patio heater.
