Here’s What Happens to Your Garden When It Rains

While home gardeners are often plagued with too much sunshine during the dog days of summer, downpours are another thing to be concerned about.

Read on to hear about how too much rain can affect your garden and what to do about it.

Lack of Sunlight

Sunlight is a major component in helping plants grow and thrive. But of course, when there are too many days of a downpour especially in a row, your plants may be threatened.

If you notice your plants aren’t doing well in particular spots where there is a lack of sunlight, you may want to consider plants that don’t need too much sunlight to survive. Plants that grow well with partial shade like lettuce and spinach would be ideal.

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Washing Away Nutrients

With extreme rain in the summertime, you need to consider what it does to your soil. If it rains a lot where you are located, rainfall could cause some essential nutrient loss like nitrogen and chloride.

To prevent this from happening, apply extra fertilizer to your garden or lawn before a big storm or significant rainfall.

Erosion

Excess rainfall can also cause soil erosion. To help with this frequent issue, redirect rainfall from your garden with the help of downspout extensions.

You can also capture excess runoff with rain barrels. You can also add a layer of woodchips or mulch to help protect your soil as much as possible.

Wet Habitats For Weeds

A lot of rainfall in the summertime can unfortunately create breeding spots for weeds to grow and thrive. To get rid of these pesky weeds, make sure to pull them out from the root before more can grow.

Another tip: use mulch. Add more mulch to your garden so it will soak up the rain, and will also help refill nutrients to your soil.

Slime Mold

Slime mold can appear in a garden or lawn after a significant amount of rainfall and it’s not pretty.

To remove this gross-looking organism from your garden, use a big rake to get rid of it, or even a powerful hose to disperse it away from your precious plants.

Pollinator Reduction

When there’s a lot of rainfall, this can negatively impact not just your plants, but pollinators like bees that are essential for your garden growth.

To help with pollinator reduction, you may want to invest in coverings for your garden, so it won’t get hit as hard with so much rainfall.

Root Rot

Root rot is a word no gardener wants to hear. And for good reason. Root rot is when the roots of your plants or trees get over-clogged with water and therefore can’t absorb the oxygen they need to grow and thrive.

To help prevent root rot in your plants, you can prune any affected roots. You can also repot any plants that have been harmed to a covered spot in your garden.

Powdery Mildew

Powdery mildew is another pesky problem that is caused by too much rainfall. This mildew is usually white or yellow and grows on the surfaces of plants.

To help, try moving these plants to a place in your garden that has a lot of sunlight.