Raindrops on Red Russian Kale leaves at Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden
Skillful Preparation
When you build your garden, make raised beds, mounds, berms for water capture. Install channels to help with drainage issues.
Mulch sloped areas to hold water in place to soak in, and keep soil from eroding. Anchor the mulch in some way to keep it from washing away. Bark chips are not a good choice. Keep every drop of rain on your property to water your trees and to improve our water table. Remember, slow, spread, sink.
Employ berms or bioswales to channel water flow safely. Establish areas to receive excess water. If you are in a low area, make sturdy sided, well anchored raised beds with diversion channels around them so they aren’t undermined.
In your garden, make ‘permanent’ pathways with boards, stepping stones, straw bedding, so you won’t be compacting your planting area soil when it is wet or dry! Best is to lay down straw then put a board or two side by side on top. This holds the straw in place, in case of winds, and the straw will feed your soil for good spring planting.
Set up to harvest rainwater for later use, even if it is just putting out containers and buckets here and there!
Way ahead of time, plant for air circulation so foliage dries quickly. Plants too closely spaced, make a warmer micro environment, mildew easier. Choose mildew resistant varieties!
Keep a Weather Watch!
- Mulch! Lay down some straw to avoid mud splatter on lettuce, chard and bok choy leaves, keep fruits clean, up off soggy ground, above the insect soil level zone. Insects stay safe below the mulch, don’t venture above, to feed on your plant, where predators and birds can get them. Just keep a 2″ gap between the mulch and your plant’s stem.
- Lay down fertilizer – manure, compost before a rain so the fertilizer will soak in. Perfect time to sidedress established plants! Be sure there are berms to keep it where you want it and it won’t wash away.
- Dig in compost and castings in the top few inches of your soil. When the rain comes, it’s like making compost and worm tea all at once in place. They improve your soil’s water holding capacity.
- Take the cover off your compost to let it get wet. Or cover it to keep it just moist and warm and in steady decomposition.
- Tie or stake plants that may topple from wind or water weight. Stake cages, trellises that might get blown over. Secure plants growing on trellises to the trellises.
- Planting! For planting seeds, it depends on whether it matters where they will end up. For example, a green manure cover crop needs no formal rows or placements. If you want a plant where you put it, might be good to wait until after the rain. Near-the-surface seeds, or small seeds, ones not so hard or heavy, can be uncovered or buried, washed away or likely rot if they get in a puddle. Bean seeds can rot, virtually dissolve, in a couple days. Plant delicate transplants ASAP just after rain. If it’s expected to be a heavy rain, wait, so your plants don’t literally drown. Plant just after the rain. The sun will warm up the soil and off they will go!
During a rainy period….
- If you didn’t before, if it’s a light rain, get out there in your rain gear and add some compost, manure or fertilizer! Great excuse to play in the rain! Otherwise, no digging in soil that sticks to your shovel. It destroys soil structure that soil organisms make and need, stops oxygen flow the soil needs.
- Check frequently to see how your plants are doing. Secure any tall plants, trellises that need it.
- If a plant is too low and in standing water, raise it. Carefully put your shovel deep under it, so not to harm the roots, push some filler soil underneath the shovel!
- Add more mulch to sloped areas if it has shifted or isn’t quite deep enough.
- Be sure your wormbox worms are not doing the backstroke! I cover mine with plastic INSIDE the worm box. Any water either runs down the sides and out the bottom or puddles on the plastic. Easy to remove.
- If the compost heap is wet enough now, cover it. Put you hand down in it to be sure how it is deeper in the pile.
- Rebuild any drainage channel that has weakened, clear if clogged. Rebuild water capture berms that have slumped. Level out areas that puddle.
- Make sure all your rain harvest system is working well. Kudos to you for harvesting!
- Practice arm-chair gardening! Read garden books, magazines, browse web sites, buy some seeds from mail-order catalogs, design your new garden layout!
- Get some seeds, soilless potting mix, gather containers with, or make, drainage holes. Start some seeds indoors!
- If the rain is prolonged, uh, do an aphid, snail and slug check as frequently as you can. Sluggo works on snails and slugs even when it is wet. Hard to believe, but, yes, it does.
- If the rain is prolonged, do harvest your fresh and crunchy produce! Lettuces and leafy greens will flourish!
- Check on fast maturing broccoli and cauliflower heads to cut at peak maturity! Gather your luscious strawberries. Keep your peas/beans picked to keep them coming!
After the rain! YES!
- Be ready to weed! Do some dust mulching. It is simply soil cultivation to about 2 or 3 inches deep. Cultivation disturbs the soil surface and interrupts the wicking of soil moisture from below to the surface and losing it to evaporation. Do it after rains or irrigating. It’s commonly done by dry farmers. A hula hoe does a great job in pathways, over wide areas! Those little 3 prong hand held or long handled stand up cultivators are great among your plants.
- Do some thinning for air circulation as makes sense. Often there is a growth spurt, and you can see where thinning is needed.
- Repair areas where soil has washed away exposing potatoes, roots of carrot, beet, radish, parsnip or turnip shoulders.
- Repair any berms, bioswales or terracing, level out high/low spots. Clear clogged drains.
- ASAP do what you do about snails and slugs. Keep checking for aphids – blast them away with water or remove mortally infested leaves.
- There is often more gopher activity, breeding, after rain has softened the soil, bringing tender young plants, so be ready! Here’s all about gophers and how to set Macabee traps! OR, now that the soil is softened, install a 1/2″ grid hardware cloth wire barrier basket under your entire garden area!
- Harvest first, water second at ground level! That’s the rule to keep from spreading diseases spread by moisture.
- It’s often warmer after a rain, and it is the warmth that mildew loves! Drench mildew susceptible plants with your mildew mix immediately. Apply it preferably before sunrise so it has time to be absorbed before it dries. Absorption can be in as quick as an hour! If you can’t do the sunrise schedule, do it early in the day while your plants are still shaded, and early enough so your plants can dry. If you prune mildewed areas off, remove those prunings, wash your hands and pruners before you go on to other plants. Water less frequently and at ground level, not overhead.
- If you had a serious flood, please see the Survival Guide – Floods Your first concern is sanitation. Mask, gloves and protective knee boots time.
Easy homemade MIX for mildew prevention and abatement. It works for certain other diseases too! Be sure to spray up under leaves as well.
- Heaping tablespoon of baking soda
- 1/4 cup of nonfat (so it won’t rot and stink) powdered milk
- One mashed regular 325 mg Aspirin
- 1/2 teaspoon dish soap
- Make your mix in a large watering can of water, preferably with a long spout so you can get in to the plant’s central leaves too.
Remember, here in SoCal, a light rain may not begin to wet your soil, not even a 1/4″ deep! Always do the old finger test to see what’s what. The top 2″ need to be moist. Sometimes you need to water after a rain!
I swear, Rainwater IS different than hose water! Plants just jump right up out of the ground! Enjoy!
Updated 11.24.20
Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic! Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!
The Green Bean Connection newsletter started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA, Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. Both of Santa Barbara City’s remaining community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are in a fog belt/marine layer area most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is.
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