Ken Craig Community Garden

Well, let's hear it.

Good morning beautiful garden people!
With all this heat and humidity, you might see a bloom of bacteria and fungal issues with your gardens. There are some things you can do to help alleviate the situations. The first is how you address watering in your garden. Try to water in the morning and at ground level allowing any moisture to dry out that's on the leaves or on the surface of the ground. Also, with herbaceous plants you can trim them back especially at the ground level and that allows sunlight and air flow to come in. Sunlight is a great sanitizer. Finally, you have issues, you can use one of two sprays. The first is a copper fungicide that you can buy at your local plant shops. Copper is a natural killer of bacteria and fungal spores. The other is a homemade remedy which breaks the pH level on the surface of the leaf. You simply get your bottle sprayer fill it with water and mix a tablespoon of baking soda into it.

With the hot weather forecast. We would like to give you some watering tips.
1. Water early in the morning. It's easier for the plant to face the heat with preventative care than to recover after the fact.
2. Water at the ground level. Only a small percentage of water transfers through the leaves. Most nutrients in the soil are water soluble.
3. Don't worry about fertilizer during stressful times. Stressed plants take up nutrients at a minimal level.

Hey Indiana! You’ll be swimming to your mailbox and back this week. 💦👀

It’s already been muggy the past few days but we’re about to take it up a notch…

Dew points (measure of how much water is in the air) during the afternoons and evenings will consistently hit the mid 70s. They may be a couple degrees higher than Florida.

▪️NORTHERN INDIANA: Your dew point may be 1-3 degrees lower
▪️SOUTHERN INDIANA: Your dew point may be 1-3 degrees higher (thanks to the 3-12 inches of rainfall we picked up the past few days)