The beautiful plants we grow in our gardens are like children to us. We give our heart and soul to help them grow beautiful and before all – healthy. The worst nightmare is seeing them destroyed by a merciless act of nature such as a Storm.

Well, a storm doesn’t equal dead flowers, because it all boils down to proper preparation and keeping your plants in check. It’s important to equip your garden and prepare it to face harsh weather and strong winds.

When you want to protect your plants from storms, you need to anticipate the problem in the first place. Storms are sure to hit your area at least once or twice a year. Still, there are some places need to cope with whole seasons plagued by the heavy rains and winds.

If you want to keep your garden healthy, It’s important to understand the weather where you live.

Preparing Your Garden Before a Storm

As hard as it may sound, you need to know when it’s going to start pouring. Despite the accurate weather predictions, you can always get a nasty surprise if things take a turn for the worse. Building protection for your plants in advance can save you a lot of trouble.

Most people neglect this part of gardening because there isn’t an immediately apparent benefit. Hindsight is always 20-20. Save yourself the regret after a storm ravages your garden. Here is a list of the things you can do to help your garden weather a storm:

1. Ensure Drainage
   The best way to protect your garden is to make sure no ponds will form due to heavy raining. Water can drown your plants or cause rot. Good soil drainage will prevent water from building up soil depressions.
2. Build shelter
   It’s fairly easy to build a shelter for your plants. Hothouses can help tremendously with the development of certain plants that enjoy sunshine and warmth. They can also protect your garden from heavy rain and winds. If you don’t grow any plants inside a hothouse, then you can stretch nylon sheets above them, if they’re not too high. However, keep in mind that this method will only help protect the plant from the impact of heavy raindrops and not pooling water.
3. Take care of your tall plants
   They may be beautiful, but they are just as fragile. If you’re expecting storms in your area, tall plants should be one of your priorities. The problem is their long stems. They’ll easily break even from slightly stronger winds.
   The only thing you can do is to stick to wooden boards in the soil, next to the stem, and tie them together. After that hope for the best.
4. Remove any patio furniture that might be blown from the wind
   Any chairs, lightweight tables, etc. Everything that wind can blow towards your plants poses a danger to them. It’s also advisable to remove it because instead of flying towards the garden it may fly against a window and break it.

Things to do if you are expecting a severe storm or a hurricane.

The worst that could happen to your garden is to get through a vicious storm. It’s quite hard to miss the news if a hurricane is about to hit your town, so there is no excuse not to prepare for it.

Many things apply from the above list, but there are a couple other things you should do in order to make the whole ordeal safer.

• Inspect the trees
  It’s very important to inspect your trees when you are anticipating a storm with stronger winds. Make sure to prune any weaker branches that might break and damage your property. If you are unsure of how and what to prune, then make sure to hire a professional to do it for you.
• Tie down the patio furniture
  Anything that is light can fly off and harm someone, or damage property. Make sure to tie anything that might fly from your backyard.  
• Take care of the pots and more delicate plants
  If you can move in any pots, then definitely do so. Pots that are too heavy, or too big to be carried would most likely be okay as long as you make sure to move them close to a fence or  house. That way they will be sheltered from at least one side.

If you’ve done all of the above things the only thing left is to hope everything will go fine. After the storm passes it’s time for you to thoroughly check your garden. Make sure to clean any debris that might have accumulated in your garden.

Also, make sure to check the soil from washout and damage. It’s very important to fix these things as soon as possible.

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