(crossposted from/to Lavidalocavore.org)
Heat as a bad thing isn’t often a topic that comes up if you live in serious temperate zones or even further north yet, where "zone envy" is a term that does not need explanation to the average gardener. I myself learned to garden in Massachusetts, in a "normal" sort of a climate, where it snows a bunch in the winter and is generally nasty for a long time in the spring.
Here in SE New Mexico, things are different. Sun is all very well and good during the winter, but come May, it’s all over now, baby blue.
Not to say that spring isn’t a deeply pleasant experience here. It’s just wonderful, and it starts in February and ends last week.
Last year we had a truly amazing and atypical heat wave (they are always deemed atypical, it seems) in late May, when it got over 110oF every day for I think at least a couple of weeks, though it seemed like about six. This year, we had our first 105 or so degree day the day before yesterday.
Temperate zone gardeners are used to trying to maximize sun, conserving warmth and exposure. They are used to doing things like growing peas. I love peas. I plant them every fall. They grow a bit, freeze back, do that several more times, and then it’s spring! Then my peas do very well for about two weeks, and then it’s summer, as in now.
I did actually manage to grow some English peas this year, a handful or so. Boy were they good! They’re dying as I speak, of course.
No, you don’t try to grow peas here. What do you grow here? Well, first you have to go through the attitude adjustment, the paradigm shift. You’re not going to plant all your happy plants out in the big broad world; feed, water and otherwise tend them, and then sit back and rejoice.
You gotta be a lot sneakier than that. You, the desert gardener, have that one thing in common with the temperate zone gardener; those people who live where it does amazing things like rain 40" a year, etc. You want to pay a lot of attention to what the sun is going to do.
There the comparison ends, because what you do then is endlessly devote yourself to hiding from it, you and your fragile little charges.
No need to worry about anything not getting enough sun in the summer here, the summer that starts in late April and ends maybe in October, maybe in November? Who knows? Similarly, there’s no need to worry about overwatering anything during these time periods, as long as you don’t get it on the plants when the sun is having at it, because it will fry them, but that’s not the water’s fault.
There are a number of lines of defense against the horrible sun. Here’s the ones I have thought up:
Live barriers, non-living barriers, plant selection techniques, direct plant shielding, soil surface protection (mulch), soil building to conserve moisture.
I’m looking at posting a series of diaries addressing each of these six ways of dealing with heat, and this can be considered a sort of a prologue and request for suggestions. Thanks for any input.