Heavy rain can cause havoc on your garden. And there are a few months a year when the downpour can be relentless. Smaller plants can take some severe damage when the big raindrops start hammering down, and the more delicate plants can be totally wiped out. You can take preemptive action to protect your garden from rainstorms and heavy rain damage.
Photo by Peter Mason on Unsplash
Coverage
If you have enough warning of a rainstorm, you can head out and begin to cover your plants with a range of overturned pots, buckets, bowls and even overturned wheelbarrows will give good coverage. It is essential that you weigh down the pots and so on because if they get blown over – they can cause more damage. You can also opt to have a plastic sheet and secure the edges with blocks, bricks or rocks to stop it from blowing away.
Anchors
If you have shrubs, trees or taller fruit and vegetable plants the consider stakes and clips to help prevent the stalks from being bent too far and snapping. You ideally want to have your stakes around 20 inches into the ground. This will mean they are very sturdy. Use removable clips to attach the stakes to the trunk of the plant so that you are maximizing the effectiveness of it. For thicker trunks and thicker stakes, gardener’s twine works very well.
Guttering
If your guttering is filled with leaves and debris then when the raid hits, it will overflow, cascading a lot of water in concentrated streams into specific areas. This can cause problems for your garden and the walls too. If you have gutter guards installed when the weather is good, you won’t have to consider any of the overflow impacts.
Native Plants
Flowers, trees and shrubs that are native to the area are going to be able to cope with the weather much easier than other plants. So it is worth researching what is native to the area, and combining that with some of the additions you are like.
Wrapping
For climbing plants, you might struggle to cover them as easily and ground-dwelling plants. You can use burlap to wrap the climbers against their poles and trellis. Heavy twine will keep this in place until you want to move it again. For any new trees wrapping the trunk is a good idea. As well as a frame which is taller than the tree by around a foot.
Row Covers
If you are in the middle of cultivating rows of plants and smaller flower bed, then you can use row cover or frost blanket to protect them from the weight of the rain and the wind too. You will need to leave space either side of the material to make sure you can weight it down in preparation for bad weather.
Roots
Water damage can be particularly bad for the roots of a plant, so as a simple safety measure to ensure you have a decent layer of mulch down. Just keep the mulch at least three inches from the foliage.
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