Seed Only Shipping $3.95

Lisa’s New Book The Cut Flower Handbook. Learn More

Flowers Standing Tall, well almost…

by | Jul 27, 2012

These afternoon storms that have been rolling through have been putting our gardens to the test. All the flowers that are netted using the plant support cut-flower horizontal netting have made out pretty well. Those not netted, not so good.

Tuesday afternoon a wind rolled over us that put one of the gardens complete flat for about 5 minutes. Wind and rain can be so damaging, but you can minimize the damage by following a few tips:

1. Plant in raised beds. This will help the bed to not drown quite as quickly as a flat bed and it drains quicker.

2. If growing tall plants that fall over during rain or wind use some type of support and install it when the plants are young.  Tomatoes need large strong cages that are staked to the ground with strong stakes and many flowers benefit from the support netting. Click here to view netting

3. In the event of a coming storm that you get forewarned of, go out and harvest all your flowers before the storm! I have been known to be out there cutting like mad those flowers that are open or those that are really tall that I am afraid won’t make it through the storm.

4. After the storm you can revive your garden by cutting plants back that may have fallen over. This works well for summer annuals, they will take the pruning in stride and regrow quickly and perennials will at least regrow foliage if not flowers.

The moral to the story is to prepare your garden for storms as you are planting it– raised beds and proper support. Then when a storm rolls in you know you have done all you can.