Gardening: Floating row covers can protect warm weather crops

The big question at the WSU Master Gardener Plant Clinic this past week was “What’s wrong with my peppers and tomatoes?”

The simple answer is that they didn’t like the cold weather we’ve been having any more than we did and simply turned yellow.

The problem is they, and most of the other warm-season vegetables, couldn’t put on an extra coat or blanket like us. They had to sit there in cold air and cold soil. As a result, they turned yellow and have few signs of growth.

I planted my warm-season garden June 3, nearly a month ago, and the plants are doing nothing. Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. I usually cover my tomatoes and peppers for the first month or so using 10-foot sections of PVC pipe bent in a hoop and then covered with floating row cover. I got busy and it didn’t get done this year.

While this weekend’s forecast calls for warm weather, next week’s calls for a cool down again. To help your struggling vegetables, cover the plants loosely with a floating row cover to capture the heat. The spun polyester fabric will hold 5 to 8 degrees of heat at night and 10 to 20 degrees during the day. The fabric still lets in light, air and water and the plants will continue to grow. Leave it on until the forecast predicts a longer run of warm weather. You could also try a lightweight white sheet at night and remove it during the day. Just don’t use plastic because the plants will cook under it in the sun.

Now for the other topic that will likely rear its ugly head as everything starts to dry out: wildfire.

For those of you living on the urban-rural boundary, now is a good time to prepare your property for the possibility of fire.

Look around your house in a 30-foot circle and remove any dead, brushy growth or thickets of pine trees. Trim up trees to about 12 feet off the ground so fire can’t use the branches to climb into the trees.

Remove piles of needles and leaves from your roof and gutters and other places where the wind dropped them. Remove fire-prone plants like junipers, conifers and lavender from any foundation plantings. The resins and oils in these plants will turn them into blow torches very quickly.

Keep your lawn mowed and watered; this could provide a firebreak. Move wood and lumber piles well away from the house. Pick up anything flammable leaning against the house.

Talk to your neighbors about working together to clean up dead brush and thickets of pines. A Saturday working together is a pretty small price to ensure everyone’s safety. Also, most of the fire districts and fire departments in the area offer free property assessments to help you identify areas that need to be cleaned up.

Pat Munts is co-author, with Susan Mulvihill, of the “Northwest Gardener’s Handbook.” Munts can be reached at pat@inland nwgardening.com.