I usually water everyday in the hot afternoon to cool down the mix. I also used sunscreen fabric on the black containers to keep it cooler. I have Root Trapper fabric bag with white covering which is pretty great at keeping the mix cooler. I'm going to use pine bark nuggets as a mulch to keep the upper mix cooler. I noticed that you get a lot more roots at the top with mulch than without mulch.

Mike, I dont know what others do, but I in Boynton Beach, Fl plant butterbeans and blackeye peas in the summer. I dont even try anymore in the summer, my second crop will start maturing about the 15th of April and be done the end of May. Its over for me till the first of Sept, when I start all over with seeds.
Plant em if you got em. Sam

curious, any of you that live in hot climates have success in the summer using Al's gritty mix? ....or does it just dry to fast?

I live in TN & we almost always get hot summer in the high 90's and low 100's every day. I've lived in Florida for a few years before & it's not as hot down there. Anyways, I give my plants a good drenching in the morning during the hot days & that seems to help them withstand the sometimes insane heat we have here. =)

I'll be interested to hear more on this from others...I use Al's mix and water daily, mid to late morning, to keep root temps down, using wicks over water reservoirs as needed. Wicks not required, if watered daily....the cheapest and easiest I've come up with so far to also help is a double layer of thickest white garbage bags over walls of containers. May try thermal blankets and foil under bags this year for comparison, along with shading top of mix in container completely. When the heat and humidity set in around here, fruitset slows to a crawl at best, but I've kept plants alive to produce again when the weather cools enough.

Hi Mike, what I try to do is give them morning sun and afternoon shade. I try and keep my potted plants underneath some Oak trees or palm trees. I used to have my Meyer lemon on a cement slab that got 10 hours of sun everyday...after a few weeks I noticed that it wasn't doing very well...I had to water it every other day and the leaves got very droopy and I also noticed the leaves turned a much lighter green. I decided to move them underneath some oak trees, and this helped so much. I do these on almost all my container plants during the summer now. Of course when we get the occasional summer thunderstorms this helps a lot also in cooling them. Nothing like rain water to cool and naturally fertilize everything.

I have some radiant barrier foil that I use to block the sun off the pots. The air temp is still very high but at least it keeps the sun off the pot itself.

Hi Mike,
I'm with Pug on this one.. we have similar climates. :)

I have 3 hughe shrubs like I posted in houseplants. So I place tomatos and shuch in containers so I can put them where they can get late day shade and filtered light.

I have grown veggies for over 10 yrs here with no problelms.

They wilt and sulk durring the day, but spring back in the evening.

I have a few containers with trees that are sitting where they get late day shade. They are too much to move. And an area in the back yard where I can put containers against a wall for late day shade.

JoJo

I've never had a problem with the heat. I've lived my entire adult life in the south. Plants, as long as they have free access to available water can take the heat.

I've never used what is called 'Al's' mix, but have been using a bark/Turface (or similar product) mix for my containers for over 20 years with nothing but good results in the heat. Such a mix allows for more frequent watering without fear of problems. Frequent watering is not something I loathe or can't make time for. Anyone who enjoys bonsai culture cannot be afraid of frequent watering.

I also had a small container nursery in the deep south (15 or something acres). Even though I grew everything in black plastic nursery containers, I never, ever had a problem with the heat. I used a medium that was almost entirely bark fines. Most of the nursery stood in the full sun from dawn til dusk. I did provide shade cloth for the camellias and azaleas.

So far, great idea's!

I noticed that when mine are in the hot sun, the black plastic potted ones do get very hot with the sun hitting them, and after a period of time, my plants start to suffer..They turn a light green almost yellow, and seem to stop growing or feeding...So I have blocked the sun from hitting these by letting the grass grow tall in front of them, blocking the sun from hitting the pots. I also wrap any material of lighter color around the pots such as aluminum foil, white sheets, white plastic bags, wet towels, which dramaticaly helps lower the soil temps..

The ones growing in any other color pot but black, seem to do very well, even in full sun on the hottest of days.
I too water mine everyday before leaving for work, since the soilless mix I use is free draining..Sometimes I water throughout the day as this cools the pots down and it seems that the damp soilless mix stays a bit cooler longer..

The ones I have in the gritty mix are never a problem. I water everyday. If I do not plan on watering for some reason, then I just remove the smaller pots from the sun, till I can, or since I have most my plants growing in clay containers, I wrap wet towels around them which can keep them moist for days....I acyually wrap wet towels around all the clay containers indoors if I plan on taking a few days vacation..This has worked wonders..Why not outdoors which I discovered last summer? :-)

Mike..:-)

Mike,
I have a few black pots that I painted a lavender/light color and have also wraped them with garden shade cloth. :)

Have a great day!
JoJo

Hi everyone!

I'm in TX, so we do get very hot summers...they seem to last longer than any other season haha.

I usually water my plants in the morning, a good long water. Most of it will be dry by the afternoon depending on the temps. I also mist my plants everyday, morning, noon and night....when ever I get a chance. Usually only in the mornings(if I haven't watered) and when I come home from work around 6pm.

I've found that misting my plants has been my saving grace. Mexican Heather is so touchy....I would water in the morning thoroughly and then by lunch time it would be dry. If gone a couple of days without watering the purple flowers would close and the tiny leaves would being to wilt but once it was drenched again the flowers would come back the next day. So to prevent that I would water in the morning, mist and then mist it every time I was outside near it. :)

Now that I have more succulents and cacti, I'll only be misting my other plants daily.

I've got some great ideas from you all...I never really thought about the heat "inside" a container. I don't have any black containers but I will start to watch out for containers that might get too hot.

Take care! :)
Ashley

I'm in Zone 10 Florida using Al's mix and second what Puglvr1 said. Everything I want to keep goes into the shade as much as possible...only a few veggie crops can handle it and require a lot water, okra and Chinese yardlong beans, eggplant and some peppers. No tomatoes here during the summer since the night temps are usually > 85F. And, for the adeniums I use a modified gritty mix with more perlite and less Turface, they can handle the heat and love the sun but MUST drain very well secondary to all the rain we get here in the summer.

Tom

I don't use Al's mix because it was too hard to find! I do use shade cloth! The best thing we ever did was put in a drip system. Every day all the plants get water, and they love it!! I vote for a drip system!! And Shade cloth!! I am in the hot desert! Plenty of sun! And it is HOT!!

What works for me is to use only Large Pots (14" - 32"), mostly glazed. Water twice a day (11:00 AM and 3:30 PM) automatically (I use drip line mini sprayers) and Use a coarse soil-free mix. Ordinary peat based potting soil can really compact in a large pot.
I fill my pots with different plants - they provide some of their own shade.

You know what? II FORGOT TO MENTION A BRILLIANT IDEA I CAME UP WITH LAST YEAR..Dumb slap..

I actually bought some over sized containers and then filled a bit of bark mulch in the bottom of them, then rested my pots inside, on top, then filled in around them with the mulch..

You wouldn't beleive how many of my plants that grew beyond the bottom of the pot into the mulch, and how much they thrived, especially my gardenias, much the roots grew into the pine mulch!

The pots defenitely stayed cool on the hottest of days..

Mike..:-)

Mike, that's a great technique!
We do the same around here, for winter and summer.

With my Buckeye trees, I let them leaf out in a south-east corner of the house...then I move them
to the north-east of the house, where they get morning to 1:00pm sun. My trees hold their leaves
into late August/October if I keep them partially shaded and watered.

Josh

Wow Mike, you were holding out on us. That really is a good one!
I need that kind of overkill for the Houston summers. I mean, seriously, I need some ice water handy just to THINK about our summers.

Now I need a whole bunch of oversize pots... 8-)

water, water, and more water, since I've not done any of the nifty pot cooling things that others have... having only worked part-time at a plant nursery many years ago... and being a gardening newbie...