High Temperature Affects on Tower Garden updated June 14, 2018 with additional content.

Tower Garden – Cool Down Nutrient Solution

What effects do the high temperatures have on your Tower Garden?

Here in the Pacific Northwest we are having a real heat wave. Temperatures have been in the 80’s and 90’s for the past two weeks.

During periods of extreme heat, plants are being stressed when temperatures are above 85 degrees. The plants will literally begin to cook! They need more water as they deal with the loss of water by evaporation through their leaves.

This heat stress encourages the plants to bolt or go dormant. In either case the plants just stop growing.

Extreme heat can also cause your plants pollen to become infertile. That means that your tomatoes, zucchini, and similar crops may flower, but they won’t be able to produce fruit.

It’s very important not to let your plants get too hot.

It is important to check the water level daily.  Keep the Tower Garden reservoir full at all times.

If you don’t have a RV water filter hooked up to your garden hose, have buckets of water sitting out a day in advance to let the chlorine evaporate. Keep these buckets out of the sun so as not to heat up the water.

During times when the plants are using a lot of water, only add Tower Garden Mineral Blend every other time time you add water. Heat causes the water to evaporate more rapidly, resulting in a more concentrated nutrient solution. Too high concentration of minerals is not good for the plants.

Some other things you can do to help keep your water cool are:

Place your Tower Garden far away from stone, brick, concrete or asphalt. These materials absorb heat and continue to release it after the sun goes down.

Rise your tower up with the Tower Garden Dolly or a similar device. This will help reduce the amount of heat transferred from the ground (which is often hotter than the air).

Add a couple bottles of frozen water to the reservoir. As they melt replace them with a freshly frozen pair. Repeat as necessary.

You may need to protect your plants from too much hot sun. Just like people, your plants can be “sunburned” during times of high temperature.

If possible roll your Tower Garden into the shade to help prevent your plants from wilting during the hottest part of the day. If you don’t have a shady place use a plant cover cloth such as the Weather Proection Blanket  or garden row cover cloth to cover your Tower Garden. This could be especially important in the hot afternoon.

Tower Garden Tip: When placing a cover over your Tower Garden put a large empty garden pot upside down on the top of the tower. This keeps the weight of the cloth off the plants on the top, preventing damage to them.

I run the pump on continuous and sometimes hand spray the Tower Garden plants. The water on the leaves helps them to cool as long as they’re not in direct sunlight.

If it becomes very hot and you have no shade for your Tower Garden freeze several bottles of water and add them the reservoir to cool the water temperature. Even if you do have shade at times you may still want to add frozen bottle water to lower the water temperature in times of extreme heat. It’s best to keep your water below 85°F.

Grow Heat-Tolerant Plants

If you live in an area of the county such as Southern California where you have an extended season of high temperatures in addition to taking the precautions above you may wish to grow heat-tolerant plants.

Some plants like heat better than others. Generally speaking, you’ll want to stick with fruiting crops and woody-stemmed herbs and avoid greens

Plants known for their heat-tolerance

• Amaranth
• Cowpeas
• Eggplant
• Lima beans
• Melons
• Oregano
• Peppers
• Rosemary
• Sage
• Thyme
• Tomatoes

These plants may be heat-tolerant, but even these plants may drop their flowers or go dormant when temperatures approach 100°F.

Tomatoes, peppers, and other fruits absorb lots of water and nutrients. You can reduce stress on your fruiting crops by harvesting frequently.

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