Good morning, and did you miss me? Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
When I last hosted Saturday Morning Garden Blogging in early August, I predicted that, here in Denver by the end of August we'd be feeling the approach of autumn with a break in evening heat and cooler morning temperatures.
That's how it usually works.
However, this year in Denver it's been different.
On Thursday, the official high temperature was 99° — a record for the day, and the latest date for a reading that high. Here in the city we run 3 or 4 degrees hotter, so we topped 100°. Tuesday and Wednesday also saw record high temperatures.
But it's not just daytime temperatures; the Denver Post reports that our abnormally high overnight temperatures has Denver looking at having one of the top three hottest overall hottest August temperatures on record.
"An extremely large, stable ridge of high pressure has been bolted to southern states," Fredin said. "This big dome of hot air is centered over Tulsa, but it stretches from Nevada to Georgia."
This kind of slow subtropical flow of hot air from the south and southwest typically starts in mid-July and ends in mid-August, [National Weather Service meteorologist Kyle] Fredin said. This year, it started in early July and is hanging on through late August.
This is a big problem in Denver because few of our public schools are air conditioned, but, with the advent of high stakes testing the start of the school year was moved to mid-August — school started a week ago. So our kids are sweltering in over-heated buildings that can't cool down over night, unable to concentrate because it's just too damned hot.
Another unfortunate consequence of the heat is that the gladiola blossoms aren't lasting as long — if they bloom at all. Luckily I caught several on camera before they shriveled.
And a final problem: middle of the night mosquito bites. Our house also isn't air conditioned; we rely on a swamp cooler and whole-house fan and sleep with the windows open. We have no screens on the bedroom windows because the pooties would rip them to shreds: they see the second-story window perches as their rightful observation posts of the night time world. And, with it so hot, we've been sleeping sans blanket or sheet, leaving lots of tempting skin for roving mosquitoes to munch on. Luckily, many years ago I discovered the Therapik, a dandy little device that applies pin-point heat to break down the chemicals in insect bites that cause itching. We have one upstairs and downstairs. It really is the best thing I've ever found for insect bites.
One thing I don't recommend buying are commercially available fruit fly traps — they are wildly over priced for something you can easily make for a few cents.
All you need is bait to draw them in, and a container to hold the bait. A great, cheap bait for both fruit flies and fungus gnats is cider vinegar — or wine if you have it around. Although many places recommend using a dish tightly covered with plastic wrap with a few holes punched into it, I have found that a small, narrow-necked container (if you can find them, miniature forcing vases work great) has a smaller footprint and is more attractive. Add a drop or two of detergent to break the surface tension; avoid highly scented dishwashing liquids as the bugs may be repelled by the chemical smell.
I keep one trap near our kitchen compost bucket (another tip: stainless steel step on trash container with a removable plastic liner bucket makes a great collection bucket for kitchen scraps — easy to open when both of your hands are full of potato peelings), and one near each area where I have potted plants, and have eliminated the problem of small flying bugs in the house, at far less than $7 each for traps that have to be replaced every three months.
That's what's happening here. What's going on in you garden?