As the Perth summer looms, local gardeners are facing the familiar mix of anticipation and anxiety. The brutal conditions of 2023 remain a stark memory, while the more forgiving 2024 season offers a glimmer of hope. No matter what the coming months deliver, proactive preparation is the key to ensuring your garden not only survives but thrives.
Building Resilience from the Ground Up
The foundation of a summer-proof garden lies in its soil. Healthy plants are impossible without healthy, resilient soil. Sabrina Hahn emphasises enriching your earth with organic materials like compost, biochar, and well-rotted manures. This practice feeds the vital ecosystem of microbes, fungi, and bacteria underground, which in turn strengthens plant roots and improves their ability to hold onto moisture and nutrients.
For Perth's common soil types, specific amendments are crucial. Sandy soils benefit from added clay to improve structure, while dense clay soils need gypsum and sand to enhance drainage and aeration. This initial step creates a robust environment capable of supporting growth through stressful periods.
Mastering Moisture Management
Water becomes a precious commodity during Perth's dry, hot spells. Hahn highlights two critical tools for moisture management: wetting agents and mulch.
In summer, clay can bake as hard as cement, and sandy soil can become water-repellent. Applying a wetting agent is essential to break the surface tension, allowing water to soak in deeply rather than running off. For sandy soils, this may need to be a monthly task.
Following a wetting agent, a 5cm layer of mulch is your garden's best friend. It dramatically reduces evaporation, keeps soil temperatures cooler, and suppresses weeds. Organic options like pea straw, lucerne, or lupin mulch add nutrients as they break down. Hahn advises always applying a wetting agent both before and after laying mulch, and cautions that wood-based mulches should consist of pieces smaller than 2.5cm to avoid spreading pests like the polyphagous shot-hole borer.
Smart Watering and Creating Shade
Efficiency is everything when it comes to irrigation. Water in the early morning or late afternoon to minimise evaporation. Zone your reticulation system so thirsty vegetable patches and fruit trees get more water than native garden beds. Regularly check that sprayers and drip lines aren't blocked and are watering only the intended areas, not paving or fences.
Increasing shade is a powerful, natural cooling strategy. The shade from trees or structures significantly lowers both air and soil temperature. For vegetable growers in WA, Hahn recommends at least 35% shade coverage from November through March to prevent heat stress and bolting. Installing arbours or trellises and growing climbing edibles like beans, tomatoes, or choko provides a dual benefit of harvestable produce and protective canopy.
Direct Plant Protection Strategies
Plants themselves can be fortified against the sun. Strengthening leaf cells helps minimise moisture loss. Adding calcium sources like gypsum, lime, or worm castings to soil supports this process. For direct protection, products like Yates Drought Shield can be applied. This polymer forms a flexible, sunscreen-like film on leaves, reducing water evaporation and shielding tissue from intense sunlight.
Sabrina Hahn's Tip of the Week: Ensure all vegetable beds have sufficient shade coverage during the peak heat months to reduce stress and water loss.
Three Jobs to Do This Week
To get your garden summer-ready, Hahn suggests focusing on these tasks immediately:
- Plant vibrant summer flowering annuals like zinnias, cosmos, sunflowers, and marigolds.
- Sow summer vegetables including tomatoes, corn, cucumber, capsicum, pumpkin, and zucchini.
- Take cuttings from plants such as bougainvillea, salvia, and geraniums to propagate new plants.
For more personalised advice, Sabrina Hahn answers reader questions in her column, Green With Envy, inside The West Australian on Saturdays. Questions can be sent to Ask Sabrina, GPO Box D162, Perth, 6001, or emailed to home@wanews.com.au.
