In the garden, the first sign of drought we often notice is wilting plants. The term drought refers to a period of time when precipitation is well below normal or completely lacking. During this time, there is not enough water in the soil for plants to use for normal life processes.

Perennials and annuals are herbaceous ornamentals. They do not have a woody structure that supports them. What holds them up has a lot to do with the water pressure within. If water evaporates through the foliage faster than the roots can pull in water from the soil, this column breaks and wilting results. If plants receive water within a reasonable amount of time, most perennials and annuals will respond and continue normal growth. But if drought conditions continue, plants wilt beyond their ability to recover.

Follow these tips to minimize drought injury to herbaceous ornamentals.

• Increase the moisture retentiveness of garden soil before planting. Add aged manure or compost to dry, sandy soils. Tight clay soils also benefit from these materials. During drought, clay soils become hard and are difficult to re-wet. Water runs off before it can penetrate. Compost and aged manure open up clay soils and allow easier water penetration.
• Add a 2 to 3 inch layer of mulch to help soil retain moisture.
• Group plants according to their watering needs. Most gardening books have plant lists for various growing conditions. Artemesia species, Coreopsis species and Sedum species are all tolerant of sunny, dry locations. Consider these plants for a potentially dry area. Avoid moisture lovers such as Astilbe species, Trollius species and ferns.
• Consider planting time. Perennials planted in late spring or early summer may not have enough time to establish a sufficient root system to survive a drought. Plant perennials in early spring or fall to avoid this problem.
• Remove moisture competitors. Weeds and turf are also seeking water to survive. Get rid of these to make soil moisture available for ornamental plants.
• Cut back on fertilizers. These additional nutrients promote growth, which increases water demands. Keep your plants lean and mean during a drought.
• Supply additional water. Herbaceous ornamentals benefit from one inch of water every seven to ten days during the growing season. If moisture is not supplied by rain, drag out the hoses.

- Martha Smith, University of Illinois Extension Educator, Horticulture

Water supplies in some areas of Illinois are dwindling. Some cities are placing water restrictions on water usage, while rural folks with dry wells are hauling water. To extend existing water supplies, water conservation is becoming vital.

A four-person household uses almost 250 gallons of water daily. Three things largely determine household water usage: laundry, bathing, and toilets. These three make up 80 percent of household water use. Decreasing water usage in these areas will reduce overall water needs.

The household washing machine is a major water user. A typical top-loading washer will use 40 gallons of water per wash cycle. Front-loading washing machines only use 20 to 30 gallons per cycle for the same amount of clothes. A front-loading washer can save 20 to 80 gallons of water per day.

Standard showerheads use 5 gallons of water per minute. Low-flow showerheads only use 2.5 gallons per minute, saving 2.5 gallons per minute of use. Some communities are offering these showerheads free of charge. Of course, taking faster showers will also save water.

Older toilets use 5 to 7 gallons of water per flush. Installing low-flow toilets will decrease this amount to 1.6 gallons per flush, saving 3 to 5 gallons per use and 25 to 40 gallons per day.

To further reduce your household water needs:

• Check your home for leaking faucets and pipes. Quickly make any needed repairs. Even a small drip can add up to several gallons per day.
• Do not let faucets run needlessly when brushing teeth or washing hands.
• Limit plant watering. Water flowers, trees and shrubs on an "as-needed" basis.
• Limit lawn watering to once per week or discontinue completely. The lawn may turn brown and look dead, but it should revive when cool, wet weather returns.
• When washing automobiles, use a nozzle on the hose so that water is not wasted.

These conservation practices can help decrease water use and lower your water costs. Even in non-drought times when water is plentiful, using less water is economically and environmentally sound.

- Duane Friend, University of Illinois Extension Educator, Natural Resources Management

http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/lawnchallenge/index.html

How much water does a lawn need? In general, cool-season grasses need about one to one point five inches of water per week to maintain green color and active growth otherwise they will naturally slow down in growth and may go dormant in hot weather. Factors such as soil, weather, and maintenance practices all play a role in the water needs of lawns. Here are a few general rules to follow:

• Decide before summer to either water lawns consistently as needed throughout the season, or let lawns go dormant as conditions turn warm and dry. Do not rotate back and forth. In other words, don't let the grass turn totally brown, apply enough water to green it up, and then let the grass go dormant again, as breaking dormancy actually drains large amounts of food reserves from the plant.
• When is it time to water? The first few warm days of summer does not automatically signal that the lawn needs to be watered. In fact, allowing lawns to start to go under mild drought stress actually increases rooting. Watch for "footprinting," or footprints remaining on the lawn after walking across it (instead of leaf blades bouncing back up). Grasses also tend to turn darker in color as they go under drought stress. Sampling the root zone soil could be another option.
• In general, water as infrequently as possible. Water thoroughly so moisture gets down to the depth of the roots. Exceptions to this general rule would be for newly seeded lawns where the surface needs to stay moist, new sod that has not yet rooted into the soil of the site, or when summer patch disease is a problem. Otherwise, avoid frequent watering that promotes shallow root systems and weeds (e.g., crabgrass).
• Given a choice, water early in the day when lawns are normally wet from dew. Avoid midday due to evaporation, and at night due to potential increased chances of some diseases.
• Spread the water uniformly across the lawn. Sprinklers vary in distribution patterns, and require spray overlap for uniform coverage. Placing coffee cans or similar straight-sided containers on the lawn can help measure water application rates. Avoid flooding areas, or missing other spots. On heavy clay soils and slopes, watch for excessive runoff; it may be necessary to apply the water in two applications to assure it soaks in.
• To help conserve water use, mow higher, avoid excess nitrogen as warm weather approaches, limit traffic over the lawn, improve turf rooting, control thatch and soil compaction, and avoid pesticide use on drought -stressed lawns.

What would summer be without chunks of cold, juicy watermelon? It's a special treat that lots of people look forward to each summer – and with good reason.

Besides being a refreshing treat on a hot day, watermelon only has about 50 calories per cup, 1 gram of fiber, no fat, little sodium and is a good source of vitamin C and potassium. And while we traditionally think of watermelon and picnics, it's great in salads and desserts, and it can be made into salsa and chutneys too.

Some shoppers can easily do the "watermelon thump," but for non-thumpers there are other ways to pick a tasty watermelon. Look for a symmetrically shaped watermelon that is free of cuts, dents or bruises. The watermelon should be heavy for its size. The underside of a ripe watermelon is yellow and the rind has a healthy sheen.

Americans consume about 3 billion pounds of watermelon each year. While there are more than 200 varieties of watermelon, consumers can look for these popular types:

• Picnic watermelon is round or oblong with light to dark green rind with or without stripes and weighs in at 15 to 45 pounds.
• Ice box watermelon is one of the round babies at 5 to 15 pounds with dark or light green rind and red or yellow flesh.
• Seedless watermelon is gaining in popularity. It has a striped rind with red or yellow flesh and weighs 10 to 25 pounds.

- Carol Schlitt, University of Illinois Extension Educator, Nutrition and Wellness

Dear Frugal Gardener,

I tried an experiment last year with large plastic patio pots. Instead of just putting annuals in them, I added a perennial or two just to see if it would survive the freezing of winter in a pot. All of them did! (Columbine, Stella d'Oro daylily, and dwarf Alberta spruce) What do you think of that?
–Potted Flower

Dear Potted,

Very cool AND frugal! Columbine is an alpine, so I'm not surprised it survived. The daylily and dwarf spruce did surprise me. Another frugal idea would be to sprinkle the seeds of any plants that reliably reseed themselves in your garden, into those patio pots. (I had about a 110% success rate from rose campion reseeding itself in a pot! Wow!)

A covering of leaves or mulch will help somewhat to keep the winter sun from thawing the soil in the daytime and refreeze and heave at night. That heaving might force perennial plants out of their protective soil. You won't be able to control the south side of the pot thawing somewhat during the day, unless it is also shaded. Keep experimenting! That's one thing that makes gardening exciting!

Although we're all proud of our successful experiments, remember that we are only to give U of I approved information as Master Gardeners. Any gardener may experiment if he or she wishes, as long as they know it is not an official recommendation from us. In other words, the gardener may try whatever they like, but the recommended course of action/treatment is whatever is backed by U of I research. – FG

Apparently, someone is still leaving "answered" messages on the machine over at Friendship Park Conservatory and not writing down the information in the book.

Please remember that you must delete any messages that you have already answered from the machine so that others will not be making the same calls over again. And, you must take the name and zip code of whomever you help and enter this information into the book we keep for this purpose. Thank you.

Harry Hoferle once had to choose between teaching and hardware. As a Master Gardener, the Palatine resident combines the two.

Hoferle teaches a "Digital Diagnostics" class to other Master Gardeners. He shows them how to use a microscope, digital camera and computer to e-mail images of plants or insects to the University of Illinois for analysis.

There's a different kind of hardware in Hoferle's background. His grandfather started John Hoferle and Son Hardware. "We were in business for 48 years, from 1923-1971," Hoferle says. "My dad died at a fairly young age. I was teaching and I was helping my mother run the hardware store. It got to be a bit much so I chose teaching over hardware."

Hoferle taught English at Weber High School in Chicago for 7 years, serving as department chair the last three. He continued his teaching career at Maine East High School in Park Ridge, instructing children with learning disabilities for 27 years.

Although he was always interested in gardening, Hoferle couldn't try his hand at it when he was young because his family lived in an apartment. His first experience was planting six honeysuckle bushes, and some petunias and moss roses in the "postage stamp" backyard of a three-flat he and his mother purchased.

Hoferle got serious about gardening when he and his wife bought their first house in 1972. Both his interest and his garden keep growing.

Because his current garden is shady, Hoferle plants vegetables–mostly tomatoes, peppers and herbs–in containers on his deck. Over the years, he has been building a perennial garden. "I've got a huge bed of black-eyed Susans in the back of my house. It's just off of one plant in probably three years," Hoferle reports. He also has a large bed of cone flowers that developed from one cutting.

"This year I created a couple of new beds in front of my house," Hoferle says. He filled the area with barberry bushes, shrub roses, honeysuckles, daylilies, coleus, blazing stars and other flowers.

Although he pursued a career that kept him the center of attention, Hoferle admits that one thing he really likes about gardening is the chance to be alone. "I don't think I'm a twisted loner," he jokes, "but gardening gives me solitude. It also gives me an opportunity to be creative."

Early on, Hoferle tended to repeatedly plant the same things. Now, he declares, "I like trying different plants. It gives me a lot of satisfaction to see it, and for people to notice."

The alleged solitude lover admits he enjoys answering gardening questions for passersby. "I think maybe it's a bit of the teacher in me," he says. "The more I can tell people, the better I feel."

That trait comes in handy when Hoferle staffs the phone line at Friendship Park or the Courthouse. Those aren't the only places where he has been answering gardening questions since becoming a Master Gardener last spring. "I've got a brother-in-law that brings things over and says, 'What's this?'"

Hoferle enjoys attending workshops for Master Gardeners, like the one on sharpening tools. He also appreciates having the opportunity to learn from more experienced gardeners.

Hoferle says that being a Master Gardener "has totally broadened my view of gardening. It's such a huge area of knowledge. I like learning new things."

On June 18, I went for a garden walk from 6-9 pm. This walk was quite different than usual because it took place at night.

The first garden I visited spans two backyards. The two neighbors have worked together for ten years landscaping without any outside help. There is a stream that flows into a fish pond which contains Koi. That evening the garden was highlighted in orange and blue for a daughter's graduation from University of Illinois.

The next garden belongs to a Master Gardener who graduated from the Master Gardener Training Class three years ago. Her husband built a new fence and designed trellises and an arbor using butternut-stained boards with copper pipes for accent. They have 250 perennial species, vines, and flowering shrubs. There are two gardens, one on each side of and near the garage. One has a bench and small fountain and the other is a vegetable garden.

The next garden surrounds an 1884 Queen Ann-style home that has been restored by the fourth generation of the family currently living there. Perennials, including white hibiscus, spice bush, and hosta were brought from a New York State farm that was owned by the family since 1964.

The fourth garden boasts a home built in 1922 by the Reichardt family who operated a large music business in Chicago. The sunken back yard with pergola and reflecting pool give the home a continental look. Four cherubs playing musical instruments surround the sunken garden. There are also two musicians playing guitars and singing in the pergola. This family had professional help in designing and landscaping this garden.

The owners of the fifth garden on Elmore Avenue favor a more relaxed garden design. The owner, who writes for the Garden Railways Magazine, has an elevated railway on an embankment which circles a grass island and runs through a pergola. There is also an English Cottage garden complete with a rose arbor on the property surrounding the 1930's French "eclectic" residence. If you walk the entire property, you will discover unusual broadleaf evergreens, a linear vegetable garden, and the Prairie Style pergola, plus a propagation greenhouse and raised deck through which grows a towering maple tree wrapped with euonymous vines. There were lighted candles throughout this lovely garden that added to its evening beauty.

- Mary McAlevy

• After mid-August until mid-September, reseed or renovate bare areas in the lawn.
• Fertilize hybrid tea roses for the final time.
• Collect flowers for drying. Choose flowers that are just starting to open. Gather flowers in the morning.
• Cut back straggly annuals to promote healthy new growth.
• Take cutting of coleus, impatiens, wax begonias, rosemary, thyme and oregano to start indoors for a winter window garden.
• After mid-August, sow greens such as kale, lettuce, mustard and turnips.
• Side-dress tomatoes with a complete fertilizer, 5-10-5 or 10-10-10, and water it in.

- Ron Wolford, Extension Educator, Horticulture

The July 13th meeting of the Unclub was in my garden and the weather couldn't have been nicer. It was fun to relax outdoors for a change and enjoy all the delicious salads and desserts that everyone made. Greg brought his latest new daylilies to share with us and they were beautiful. I was glad that my daylilies were blooming as I knew he would enjoy seeing them. Mary brought her friend along who also seemed very interested in gardens. Even my husband, who prefers golf to gardens, had an enjoyable afternoon.

Colleen Graudins is inviting us all to her garden next month. I can't wait to see it as I know it will be beautiful! We will all meet at her home in Prospect Heights on August 3rd at 12 noon. We're getting back to our usual schedule of meeting on the first Wednesday of the month again. Please call the Master Gardener office at 847-818-2901 to RSVP or if you need directions. Instead of making this meeting a pot luck, it was suggested that we all bring our own sandwich. She will provide the drinks. Also, if any of you would like to make a dessert, she would appreciate that as well. I plan to make one. Hope to see you all there.

In the mean time, keep watering those plants especially the tomatoes. They should be turning red soon. Gil is already eating his and his cucumbers as well.

I'll look for you at Colleen's on August 3rd.

- Carol Bean