Cleaning Up Your Garden After Storm Damage

Wind, Hail and Too Much Water Can Wreak Havoc on Any Garden

Fern Fischer
Clean up Debris
Clean up the superficial debris so you can take stock of your garden. Sticks and leaves blown down from trees need to be removed, as well as plants that may have been tossed about. If fruits were knocked from the plants, pick them up as soon as possible. Keep any that are edible, and put the rest on the compost pile. Pick up vines that have blown down from a trellis, and tie them back into place, pruning off portions that are too damaged to survive. Remove plants that show signs of disease or fungus.

Assess the Damage
When the preliminary debris is cleaned up, assess the damage. Decide what to keep and what to destroy. Reset fallen stakes and supports so you can anchor plants to them immediately.

Stake Fallen Plants
Broken vegetable plants, such as peppers or eggplants, may appear beyond help at first glance. Examine each plant, and if the roots and main stem are intact, try pruning out broken or hail damaged branches. Plants will often recover from storm damage if you give them a chance. A vegetable plant doesn't have to be perfectly formed to yield delicious food. Broken plants may be lopsided, so stake them to keep them from toppling over. Several inches of straw mulch around cabbage and broccoli plants will help support them while the heads finish forming.

Toss Broken Plants
Garden plants that are beyond help should be cleared away immediately. Put them on the compost pile, and turn it daily. This will help keep diseases, mold and fungi from spreading to the rest of your garden. Good garden sanitation, which simply means cleaning up plant debris, is the best way to prevent garden diseases.

Prune
Peppers will recover from pruning, as will eggplant and indeterminate tomatoes. Use pruning as a method to prepare the healthy parts of plants for new blossoms and vegetables/fruits. Determinate tomatoes, such as romas, will not grow new fruit-bearing branches, but they will develop fruit on branches that survived. Hail can pelt holes into leaves, making them ragged and unsightly, but if the leaves haven't wilted by the second day, there is a good chance the plant will recover. ..with holey leaves.

Replant
If it is early enough in the season, you can replant short season crops and still have a harvest before frost. Count back from the earliest expected fall frost date for your area, and decide which seeds will have time to mature if you replant. Green beans, for example, require as few as 40 to 45 days to bear a crop, so it makes sense to replant after a summer storm. Corn, which requires about 90 days to maturity might not be a candidate for replanting.

Read more by this author here, including many organic gardening articles.

Source:
Personal Experience

Published by Fern Fischer

I keep busy with organic gardening and living green, including healthy cooking with garden goodies. I enjoy writing about all of these, but my special interest is quilting, vintage quilts and textiles and re...  View profile

Try reviving garden plants after storm damage. They will often grow and produce. You may be able to replant some direct-seeded crops and still have a harvest.

16 Comments

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  • Paul Rance9/9/2010

    ...or even bad

  • Paul Rance9/9/2010

    Can look back here after strong winds that's for sure.

  • Jeanne Baney8/22/2010

    Very good information, so useful!

  • Ellen Burford7/26/2010

    Great ideas

  • Darrin Atkins7/23/2010

    good job on this article!

  • Hifive7/22/2010

    Good ideas in a good article, Fern..

  • Lynn Mason7/15/2010

    my topsy turvey tomatoes blew down this year, broke in half just as the green tomatoes were getting big. Green tomatoes rolled everywhere! Ha, I saved about half the plats, just hope there is enough time for the fruit to regrow:)

  • Nita Mukherjee7/12/2010

    Helpful suggestions, as always!

  • leroy coffie7/11/2010

    good info. we can have big storms here in FL

  • Jack Wellman7/9/2010

    We have plenty of storms in Kansas, thus, plenty of clean up to do Fern. I love the ideas you wrote down. So easy to follow and ones that I had not thought of. You are such a brilliant writer full of wonderful ideas. Love your Contributors Page full of awesome articles.

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