Sun and Water for Plants
Weather can either be a friend or foe to the gardener. It can provide warm sunlight and rain showers for growth, but alternatively produce bitter cold and golf ball sized hail, destroying much of your work. Organic or traditional, gardeners can’t escape the temperament and fierceness of the weather.
Dry Heat
Plants need sunlight to grow. Without the sun, plants can’t break down nutrients into absorbable products, making the sun a vital part of the plant’s system.
Too much of a good thing, though, is bad – and too much sun can kill a plant. Intense heat dries up moisture in both the ground and the plant. The leaves then actually crack and wilt. Without the leaves, the plant will die.
It is tough to protect a garden from this kind of weather. Adding a cover over your plants may help deflect the intense rays of the sun, while frequent and light water breaks help keep them hydrated. This may work for a short period of time, but does not permanently fix the issue of too much sunlight.
Rain, Go Away
On the other side of the spectrum is water. Plants obviously need water to thrive and produce. Rain storms that last in burst of thirty minutes provide the ideal amount of water for both plants and the soil.
However, when rain falls for longer stretches of time, it can turn a necessary element into a destructive one. Heavy rainfall can potentially do a lot of damage, washing away soil and critical nutrients in it. When plants are routinely surrounded by water puddles, they drown from the excess.
There are only a few helpful options available that can be done when the rains are falling often. The soil and compost should be replenished as often as possible. This will give the plants access to the nutrients before the rain washes them away.
If possible, plants also should be planted in elevated rows to keep them out of the water build ups. Any standing water around the plants needs to be irrigated out, requiring perhaps some creativity to move the water to a safer part of the garden. Certainly this will help your plants, but it can’t save them if the rain continues to fall non-stop.
Sun and water are vital to the survival of most plants. As with anything else, too much off a good thing can be bad. This is no different with gardening as intense heat and torrential downpours can spell the death of a garden. To avoid this, gardeners need to pay close attention and use some creative measures to protect plants.
