Hello, and welcome back to my gardening series! The big weather story this week is certainly going to be the heat, which according to the NWS, will be extreme in some spots across our region.
Over the next few days, afternoon highs will climb into the very upper 90s. A few spots hitting 100 or higher is also possible over the next couple of days. As such, the NWS has issued an extreme heat warning for parts of western Mississippi and northeastern Louisiana. Jackson is currently under an extreme heat warning.
Morning lows also aren’t much better, with most days seeing low temperatures in the mid-upper 70s, which may put a good amount of stress on some less heat resistant plants. I talked about overnight lows in my most recent gardening themed post. Since lows aren’t likely to drop below the mid 70s for an extended period of time, your plants may need more water than expected. This is because plants get little to no relief from warm temperatures, so they keep on producing sugars and energy, which require water.
Tending to your gardens this week will be tough. I certainly would not recommend doing it during the daytime, but if you must, it’s important that you don’t let the leaves get wet as they will burn in the sun, causing damage to your plants.
Over the next few days, we do have a chance of storms each day, but a certain location has no guarantee of seeing any rain. The rain from tropical depression 2 which may become tropical storm Bertha is expected to stay too far south for most of our region.
For your gardens, this means a good amount of watering is necessary. Storms look fairly sparse, and the extreme heat will dry out plants quicker.
