Excessive garden rain and humidity can cause damage to your vegetable and flower gardens. However, there are steps you can take to avoid damage in your garden if it is in an area that is susceptible to these conditions. While soggy weather can make your plants slower and more fragile, it doesn’t have to stop your gardening season. To help your garden get over this hurdle, check out these tips and tricks on garden & pest management during excessive garden rain & humidity.
Gardening in Excessive Rain
Water is vital for the growth of any garden and for photosynthesis to take place. However, excessive garden rain can cause damage to plants in more than one way.
Excessive Rain’s Effects on Gardens
Excessive rain can dampen outdoor summer fun and have severe consequences for gardens. Here are some common problems gardeners face when heavy rains arrive:
- Sediment Erosion: To thrive, plants need plenty of soil. Heavy rains can strip away soil and leave roots exposed and damaged.
- Nitrogen Leaching from the Soil: Heavy rain can reduce the soil’s essential nutrients for photosynthesis.
- Root Loss: Healthy root systems are vital for plant growth.
- Puddling and Standing Water can lead to root rot if there is insufficient airflow to the root systems.
- Inadequate Sunlight: Overcast summer days and heavy rain can block the sun’s essential light from the gardens, making it difficult for vegetables and flowers to grow.
- Plant Collapse: Heavy rains and storms can cause damage to stems and knock plants over.
- Fungal Diseases: Molds love damp conditions, and it’s hard to stop them once they start.
- An Increase in Slug Population – Oh, those slugs! Slugs thrive in damp, rainy weather. Slugs can severely damage plant stems and leaves. Be on the lookout for slugs and snails after heavy rainfall.
- Less Care and Time Spent Gardening: Too many rainy days or excessive rainfall can make it difficult for gardeners to visit their gardens as often, causing pests and diseases.
- Cracked Fruits: Too much garden rain at once can cause plants like tomatoes to split and burst at their seams.
Garden & Pest Management in Excessive Rain
Gardeners can feel overwhelmed and discouraged when there is too much rain. Keep your head up, even in the face of unyielding rainfall. If heavy rains are expected in your area, there are many things you can do to protect your garden and minimize damage.
- Consider incorporating raised beds into your garden. Plants in raised garden beds can withstand heavier rain than those in the ground.
- If your area is susceptible to heavy rains, you can plant your garden on mounds to ensure your plants don’t drown in standing water or get wet feet.
- When planting your garden in-ground, make sure to mound your rows. This will ensure that your plants remain higher than the ground and keep water from pooling.
- Create a rain garden to collect water from your garden beds.
- Keep your plants healthy by placing them in the right place, feeding, watering, and fertilizing them to ensure they are more resilient to stress.
- Mulch your garden beds early in the spring to reduce soil compaction and prevent erosion by dispersing the effects of heavy garden rain.
- Avoid ignoring your garden during rainy, soggy days. Without the careful eye of gardeners, pests, and diseases can quickly cause a lot of damage. You should always look for signs of infection, pests, or damaged plants.
- Beer traps can be washed away by excessive rain when dealing with slugs. Keep slugs away by checking your garden soil. Placing boards around your garden is another option to catch large amounts of slugs.
- Add soil to drooping tomato plants. Tomato plants can produce additional root shoots from their stems, which can help to revive a waterlogged plant.
- Reduce the spread of mold spores and remove leaves lower than the ground. Any diseased leaves should be removed completely from your garden or compost pile. Use clippers to disinfect the plants between cuts so mold spores don’t spread to healthy plants.
- Remove plants that have outgrown their spaces or fallen over.
- Choose fruiting plants that are resistant to cracks. To prevent pests from entering your garden, you should harvest any fruits that crack and immediately use them.
Growing in Extreme Temperatures and Humidity
You can bet the sun will rise after heavy rainfall in mid-summer, even if a few clouds hang around. Depending on where your home is, you may experience a lot of hot, humid, and sticky weather, which can affect plant growth and health. However, humid conditions can also cause problems in the garden, such as decreased air circulation. High humidity is a sign of high levels of water vapor. Therefore plants cannot force water to evaporate or absorb vital nutrients from the soil. Fungal diseases can quickly decimate gardens.
Common Garden Pests and Diseases Caused by Humidity
No matter the amount, these are unwelcome guests: mildew, fungal disease, and pests. They love humid, damp conditions and can quickly spread to an insurmountable extent.
Humidity-craving troublemakers gardeners should watch for:
- Mildew
- Blight
- Botrytis blight
- Downy Mildew
- Powdery Mildew
- Slugs & Snails
Garden & Pest Management in Excessive Humidity
Humidity can make breathing difficult for gardeners and the plants they are trying to grow. You can minimize the chances of fungal problems in your garden by making frequent inspections and following these tips.
- High humidity can make it difficult to work in your garden. Get plenty of fluids, protect yourself from the sun and mosquitoes, and do your garden work when it is cooler.
- Choose native plants that are tolerant of local weather conditions to plant in your garden.
- Choose plants that are more resistant to pests and fungal diseases. This information can be found on the seed packet or plant tag.
- Ensure good air circulation by spacing your plants well.
- Take out plants with signs of fungal disease or that are obstructing airflow or overcrowding other plants.
- Clean pruning shears used to remove diseased leaves so that don’tdon’t contaminate the rest of your plants.
- Mulch your garden beds to regulate the temperature and keep soil-borne fungal diseases at bay.
- Ensure that the plants you purchase or plant are suitable for your USDA zone.
- Plants that thrive in humid environments are best.
Recommendations for Plants in High-Humidity Zones
You may need to modify how you plant your garden if high humidity is a problem. Instead of fighting the humid climate, embrace it and plant plants that thrive in hot and humid environments.
These plants thrive in high humidity.
- Watermelon
- Okra
- Begonias
- Coneflower
- Plants of the Tropical Zone
- Lima Beans
- Bush Beans
- Pole Beans
- Eggplant
