This summer's drought will affect your trees and shrubs next year

CLEVELAND - Northern Ohio is currently experiencing a severe drought across the area.

Your landscaping certainly has suffered the effects. Lots of rain over the past couple of weeks has helped alleviate the dry conditions across northern Ohio some. But for many trees and shrubs, it may have been too little, too late.

Even if the drought ended tomorrow, many of your landscape plants will feel the affects of this summer's dryness well into next year’s growing season. Here’s why, spring blooming trees and shrubs actually produce next year’s flowers and fruit buds during the summer months this year. Many plants produce next year's flowers during mid-summer, mainly during the month of July. Dry conditions this past July forced the plants to conserve energy and set fewer flower and fruit buds for next year. This means fewer flowers and fruit next year.

P.J. Baldree, of Losely & Son Nursery in Perry (Lake County), sums it up this way: "The plants didn't have a lot of moisture to pick up from the soil. So they didn't put it into their flower bud."

The trees and shrubs most likely affected are Dogwood, Azaleas, Rhododendron and Cherry.