Container Gardens and Rainstorms
By Vanessa Richins
For many of us, gardening season is coming to an end.
The leaves are changing, and the promise of snow looms in the near future.
While you may keep some plants indoors in the house or greenhouse, you anxiously await spring.
Some, though, are a bit more fortunate. They live in the warmer zones where it rarely snows and you can garden for most, if not all, of the year. I used to enjoy that (sigh), since I spent my first 20 years living in Zones 9/10 California.
Back home in Southern California, we would get rainstorms during the winter. Since I lived in the mountains, the wind would blow especially hard and the storm wreaked havoc on the yard. Our banana tree was destroyed this way.
When you have a container garden, it’s important to take precautions during a rainstorm to help the plants survive. Fern from Life on the Balcony, a fellow Southern Californian, offers advice on how to keep your potted plants safe and happy during rainstorms, no matter what time of year.
Some are so common sense that we sometimes just don’t think of them. For example, she reminds that you don’t need to water your plants if you know it’s going to rain. (On a related tangent, one of my biggest pet peeves is seeing sprinklers going off during storms – they need to install rain sensors!) If plants receive too much water, the roots can rot and diseases can start attacking the plant.
Check out the rest of Fern’s advice before the next storm hits!
December 23rd, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Thanks for the link! Unfortunately I didn’t follow my own advice recently (too busy at work, moving, etc) and rain coming off the roof of my apartment building ripped some of my most beloved aeoniums to shreds.
January 7th, 2010 at 10:18 pm
My experience is that a rain chain can help direct water flow off your roof and where you want it to go…like into a plant or into a bucket…we have some at our website:)
GartenGrl