As summer just begins the heat seems to have skipped ahead to peak temperatures and storms over our house. We have had multiple days with temps over 100 degrees F like many around us, and we experienced a small tornado Monday night. Everyone is safe thank goodness but some of our shade structures at work did not fare so well…some even full re-builds. As we have ventured out into the blazing heat this week it has become blisteringly obvious that heat exhaustion is around every corner, and we need to take precautions.
Our first line of defense in this heat is our clothing. Many clothing manufacturers put an SPF rating on their product these days. Start with a hat, obviously, this is single handedly your most important tool in the garden. A baseball cap is okay however you can significantly reduce your temperature with a large straw hat that has a 360-degree brim and ventilation in the top. Check out our favorite hat here! Those cloth hats might look cute but do nothing to shed the heat coming off your head.
My personal favorite cooling clothing choice is a long sleeve dry fit shirt, if you’re looking these are practically given away at this point as promotional gear. I have absolutely no shame wearing my Christmas 5k fun run dry fit complete with snowflakes while I garden in August, it was free and does a great job keeping me cool in the heat. I am shameless about asking for free shirts if I see a company is giving out dry fit gear. Save those cute garden shirts for shopping days at the garden center or when the weather cools down a bit.
I own 2 dry fit pants that are full length and do a great job at keeping the sun off. I typically save these for fishing so I don’t get burnt, but I have brought them out for gardening a few times. I don’t find these keep me any cooler, but if you have ever sun burned the back side of your knees you know the value in these sunblock pants.
Hydration is of course key no matter how much cooling/ sun protection you have on, you will drop faster than a dog in roller skates if you’re not drinking anything. Gatorade actually made a chart to show which of their products you should be drinking depending on your exertion level, not a surprise there ha-ha. I’m not promoting Gatorade but there is truth to drinking more than just water if you are working very hard and need to replace electrolytes. One of our favorite electrolyte replacements is from Ultima! The blueberry or lemonade are certainly game changers if you aren’t a huge water drinker. 1 gallon of water per day is what a healthy adult who is active, particularly outdoors, should be drinking every day. We use measured water bottles in our house and know we need to drink 4 of them per day so we can avoid single use plastic bottles and more importantly save money by refilling with filtered water from our kitchen.
I was very happy to be apart of an educational meeting at our local extension office in Palmetto this week where we went over pesticide safety and heat stress, this particular class was free but even the classes you have to pay for are very inexpensive. Look up Manasota FNGLA or Manatee County extension office to follow them on Facebook and you can follow for updates on future teaching classes. The class I attended offered an excellent web page, Heat Illness Prevention | Pacific Northwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center (washington.edu) , despite being a study from a northern sate all of the information applies. They have everything listed for free in English and Spanish, and even videos, I though this was a great resource.
I hope everyone is still gardening in the heat, there is a lot we can do. We have lots of exciting things to talk about coming up in the next couple weeks, so hopefully everyone will check back for our next blog. I promise it won’t be so long between posts. Stay hydrated, cool, and safe in your gardens over summer, talk to you soon!
The Veranda View 