Many of us have plants in the landscape that are suffering from the extended drought. Some of these plants have died back to some extent. Twigs and branches of woody plants like shrubs and trees may have died, and herbaceous plants (annuals and perennials) could have shriveled in the past several weeks. Our lawns are brown and lifeless.

What should you do to help these plants recover when the drought does break?

Implementing water conserving gardening practices can reduce the impact of drought on your landscape. If you do not currently use these gardening practices, adopt them now and in the future.

• Maintain a three to four inch layer of mulch in your garden and around trees and shrubs. Mulch helps prevent evaporation and holds moisture in the soil. Mulch also serves to maintain a cooler soil temperature and helps prevent weeds, which compete for soil moisture. Fine-textured mulches, such as pine straw, pine bark mini-nuggets and double shredded hardwood mulch do a better job of conserving moisture than coarse-textured mulches. Mulch as large an area as you can. The roots of established plants extend several times the canopy spread.
• Educate your landscape with newspaper. Use a leaf rake to gently pull back existing mulch, being careful not to disturb the surface roots of plants. Then place two or three sheets of newspaper on the soil surface, moisten it, and rake the mulch back over the newspaper. The newsprint will serve as an added barrier to moisture loss. Don't make the paper layer more than two or three sheets thick. Doing so can actually keep rainwater from penetrating to the roots.
• When you do irrigate, apply water slowly to achieve deep penetration that encourages deep rooting and drought tolerance. Direct water only to the root zone of wilting plants. Give priority to trees and shrubs planted within the past four months.
• Install a drip, trickle or micro irrigation system to conserve water and direct it to the roots of plants where it is needed. This method wets the soil slowly and deeply. Up to 60% of irrigation water can be saved using drip versus overhead watering.
• Irrigate in early morning when humidity is high. There will be less evaporation.
• Consider removing plants from your garden that require frequent irrigation and are not drought tolerant. In the future, install only plants known to be tolerant of drought once they are established in the landscape.
• Install rain barrels if your house is guttered to catch rainfall for watering.

Other things your can do to reduce drought related plants stress:

• Do not fertilize during extended dry periods. Fertilizers are chemical salts and can actually dehydrate plants' roots.
• Avoid the use of pesticides on drought stressed plants. These will likely cause added stress to the plant and may only serve to make things worse.
• Selective pruning may be necessary when a plant wilts and branches start dying. In this case, pruning out the wilted material will reduce the water demand this foliage places on the roots. Scratch the bark away from the twig. If the tissue underneath is white or green then the branch is alive. If it is brown, then the branch has died. Prune back to green or live tissue.
• If perennials have died back, you should remove all dead tissue. This material could harbor disease or insects that will attack the new growth, once the plant resumes growing.
• Annuals and perennials demand more water than woody ornamentals. But wait for them to wilt before you water. If you're not allowed to water anything outside, cut back wilted annuals and perennials in an effort to reduce their moisture loss.
• At this point, do not plan on dividing perennials this fall unless they grew well this summer and are overcrowded. Plants that have suffered from the drought will be weak and vulnerable to the additional stress resulting from division and replanting.

Most lawns in our area consist of cool-season grass species, which usually go dormant during the hot, dry weeks of summer and return to active growth in the fall. These lawns can be kept green and growing during summers with adequate water, but in times of prolonged drought and limited water supplies the best approach is to let them remain dormant. When conditions improve and growth resumes, there are several recommendations that should be followed.

• Mowing height - Raise the mower deck to the highest setting. This promotes deeper rooting and maintains turf quality.
• Mowing frequency -- Mow less frequently, but often enough that no more than one-third of the leaf tissue is removed. Mowing stresses the grass plants by increasing respiration and reducing root growth.
• Use a sharp mower blade. This produces a cleaner cut that heals more quickly and loses less water.
• Fertilization - Avoid or cut back on usual fall nitrogen fertilizion that may stimulate excessive blade growth at the expense of root development.
• Overseeding - To improve lawn density, overseed this fall or early next spring with the appropriate species.

Hopefully, the drought will break soon and you can plan on setting out new shrubs, trees and herbaceous plants this fall. Click here for a partial listing of plants known to be drought tolerant once they are established.