Rain, rain go away….

Mon. Jun. 25, 2018

Click below to listen to my 2 min. Garden Bite radio show:  Rain, rain, go away…

The rain did not let up for a week…  including the first day of Summer!  Okay, enough whining.  Many of us have experienced excess rain, but some have had a real issue with flooding….

Then there’s just really wet lawns…  check out this information from the University of MN Extension from 2010 on wet lawns

wet lawn

Some folks are seeing lots of mushrooms in their lawn… Inky Cap

Japanese Parasol aka Inky Cap
golden mushrooms

Others are dealing with standing water (as shown in picture above), which can literally drown your lawn. Air gaps that normally provide breathing room are filled with water. Grass roots die if they go without air for too long.

Wet conditions also encourage fungus that can create dieback, damage and even kill your plants. Although this is rare.

We tend to forget that grass is a lot of small plants! Although there may not be a lot you can do where areas are still saturated, the most important thing is to avoid any traffic in the affected area. Too much traffic will create structural damage to your lawn, creating compacted soil that’s very difficult to repair.

Before you attempt to tackle your lawn issues, make sure the soil has dried out sufficiently. You may need to reseed or even resod if you can.

Most perennial plants can withstand standing water for a few days but any more than that, the root structure will suffer.

One thing we sometimes forget about is making sure our containers have drainage holes.  Some of those large ceramic containers don’t have much for drainage.  You can give them an advantage when planting by providing perlite in the soil mix and/or placing foam blocks in the bottom.

If your veggie garden became a pond, let the soil dry and re-assess whether they’re worth saving.  Likely they may not be.  Leafy greens may just be too infiltrated with dirt and silt.

Hopefully we’re on the backside of all this rainfall.