7 ways to protect your plants from extreme heat

Excessive heat from continuous sun exposure can be devastating to plants. Here are seven tips for dealing with such heat extremes to help you avoid a gardening disaster.

To protect heat-intolerant vegetables, including cauliflower, cabbage, radishes, beets, spinach and peas, plant them as soon as the soil can be worked in spring. This allows them to mature during the cooler weather.

• You can also plant a second crop in late summer for harvest in fall.
• In warmer regions they can be planted in late fall for a winter harvest.

Plant tall sun-worshipping plants like corn, sunflowers or cosmos south of those that need a little shade each day, such as lettuce, spinach and beets.

• The natural shade provided by these taller plants can mean the difference between a more bountiful harvest from your veggie garden, or almost nothing at all.

To create shade for plants that are heat and drought sensitive, construct a simple framework of new or salvaged lumber over the planting bed.

• Cover the structure with wood slats, salvaged window screens or even a piece of burlap.
• Although the structure might not look "pretty" keep in mind your aim is to help your veggie garden flourish.

Choose a heat-tolerant variety of lettuce, such as butterhead, so that you can grow it all season.

• Plant a succession of seedlings at two to three week intervals for a good, steady supply.

Plant heat-sensitive ornamentals on the shady side of buildings, next to taller shrubs or beneath the overhanging branches of trees.

• Don't plant under shallow-rooted trees, such as maple or beech.
• Any plants or flower beds facing south will receive sunlight most of the day. Before moving plants to shadier locations, take note of when the area is shady and for how long.

To help prevent newly planted trees from getting too hot, paint their trunks up to the lower branches with white latex paint, which will reflect the sun's rays.

• Wrapping their trunks with burlap or crepe kraft paper will also help young trees escape the withering effects of excessive heat.

Organic mulches like pine bark, wood chips or shredded newspaper keep soil cool when spread to a depth of about five to eight centimetres (two to three inches) deep.

• Plastic mulches, unless covered with organic material, will merely make soil hotter. What's more, any reflective materials, such as shiny pebbles, may contribute to foliage burn in hotter climate because they reflect the sun's rays.