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California Gardening

Newbie - Will heavy rain drown my garden?

10 years ago

Hi Everyone,

I am a brand new square foot gardener in Los Angeles. I planted my seeds in a cinder block raised bed with Mel's mix early this month.

(I planted direct sow - baby carrots, spinach, lettuce, red and white onion, chives, and spaghetti squash)

Everything has been starting to sprout!!! But I am worried that since it has been down pouring for two days, and is predicted to continue through tomorrow, will it drown my little seedlings? Should I construct a cover for them so they don't get anymore water?

Lastly, I would just like to thank all of you for sharing your wisdom, this forum has been my go to for attempting to teach myself the magic of gardening. So thank you!

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Comments (5)

napapen
10 years ago
I have cement block raised garden beds also and with the right mix, it drains but retains moisture so I would not worry.

Penny
LoneCowboy
10 years ago
If you went with a true Mel's Mix formula, you should have no problems. I have a 16'x3' raised bed on concrete and it actually drains the best of my raised beds. I actually look forward to the rain. Something about natural rain water seems to inspire growth within the plant and I get a huge growth spurt as soon the clouds clear to that full sun.

good luck!
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Same thing going on over here on the west coast. We have some hope though, supposedly after this nastiness moves off later today we should be seeing only 10 and 20% chances of rain, lots of sun and cooler temps for the next 8 days. Hopefully that forecast holds and we can dry out some. I have a light shade cloth attached to posts that runs the length of my plot. Works well in difusing the impact when the rain is a downpour, but yesterday was mostly sideways. Luckily I planned to pull my pole beans, because Mother Nature helped the process along Chrissy
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Dry rootballs are often the result of textural differences between the soilless potting medium or claylike field soil the plants came from the nursery in and the soil on the new site. If the rest of the bed was moist with the heucheras only being dry then it was something like that - something involving the heucheras specifically - and not the overall conditions. This should have been apparent when these were dug and pulled apart(?) but heucheras specifically are prone to weevil larvae gnawing the roots off and leaving a sort of nearly rootless husk sitting on top of the ground, unable to keep itself turgid without diligent watering - and maybe not even then. The same thing is common here with primroses.
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Hi Kristin... I'm in the same boat as you (I am located in greater NY metropolitan area of New Jersey)...I have a south east facing 20 feet balcony where I started gardening 3 springs ago. I grow veggies and flowers in my small space. So here are some advice from a little-more-experienced-than-you container gardener. On Sunday morning I transplanted the last batch of my plants and was happily thinking that major chunk of my hard work of preparing soil and transplanting all my Plants for this season was over. To my horror the rain struck so hard that most of my containers simply got inundated. I could see the plants sitting in deep pool of water and many tiny seedlings uprooted. Needless to say there were muddy splatters everywhere. This kind of rain washes away vital nutrients (unfortunately I applied organic food on Sunday itself) and also compacts the potting soil. So my advice would be inspect all the containers and let excess water flow out, then fluff up the top few inches of soil using a small trowel or anything handy (take care to not to disturb the roots). Wash the dirt away from the leaves of small seedlings (in my case they were caked on with soil), stake plants which are bent, over any exposed root. Now wait for a day for the soil to get out of the soggy state and then go ahead with your plan to apply fertilizer as you mentioned. Moving forward keep an eye on weather channel app for heavy rain in your area and bring young plants in shelter...this is what I had been doing for past seasons but kind of became relaxed as this season was very dry so far. The rain definitely has awakened me up :) I hope this helps...
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Your garden is looking great Esther, rain at the right times does wonders. When you first posted your mystery plant I knew it looked like an Orchid. It is Epipactis helleborine, I had just never seen such a nice specimen. Unfortunately it is considered invasive in some areas, spreading by seed. The ones that start here are usually a single stalk and they do not return the following year. Boy this forum is hopping and I am trying to get caught up!
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Thuringiensis
10 years ago
If you see a lot of water pooling where the seedlings are, you can expect high attrition, though usually not 100% unless its sustained bad flooding for several days.

You'll know the full damage in a week or so. If there is damage, the newest seedlings will be the worst hit, but they often surprise you and recover a few days later. Plants that have well-established true leaves will tend to survive better.

After the rains stop, you may want to check and see if some of your seedlings are buried under soil that got tossed around by water. If they are, try to VERY CAREFULLY expose them, while keeping their root portions covered by soil. If you just see some accumulated splashed earth on their leaves, leave it for a bit and hose it off later once the ground has dried out some.

We all had this experience about 3 years back when we had some REALLY hard rains in LA. It took out a lot of seeding plants in February, even in raised beds with "pretty good" drainage.

Anyhow, your raised beds should be fairly resistant -- this is one of the reasons you make them. That being said -- if you are seeing ANY sign of pooling water that is lasting more than an hour or so, and you have an easy way to keep water off the beds, go for it.

Worst case though -- can just replant. You aren't going to lose that much harvest or time at this point, and if you are super concerned, you can always just order some seedlings to make up the lost time either directly at the store or via mail from a nursery.

Good luck! Hopefully your beds manage the damage.

This post was edited by Thuringiensis on Sat, Mar 1, 14 at 3:43
Thuringiensis
10 years ago
Oh and -- with a lot of the plants you are mentioning (carrots especially come to mind), if you did it right, you over-seeded them anyway, so this may just end up saving you a little bit of thinning effort.
tim45z10
10 years ago
Rain brings nitrates, which are created in the atmosphere by lightning.

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