Protect Your Garden from Bad Weather
One of the most hazardous stuff that may happen to your plants is weather. Many a garden continues to be demolished overnight because of this phenomenon. And seemingly, there’s nothing we are able to cause by prevent it. Of course, if weather didn’t exist at all only then do we wouldn’t have that nice sunshine that is good for the growth in our plants. Protect your garden with these tips in preparing from cold weather.
How to protect your garden?
The horrors of hail
When rain begins to fall, usually the first reaction of a gardener is pure joy. After all, this means you don’t need to bother about heading out and watering it manually. Natural rain can’t be anything but great for all your thirsty plants, can it? Well once that same gardener starts to see the beautiful rain drops turn into small globules of ice, usually a complete emotional breakdown is in order. I know this from experience, because when I would be a blooming gardener, I had my garden completely demolished by about 10 minutes of severe hail. When I first learned my lesson around the damage hail can perform, however devised a method of coping. I started to help keep large clay pots within 10 feet of my garden, to ensure that at any sign of hail I possibly could run outside and have the plants sheltered within seconds. This saved me from having to watch my plants be ripped to pieces on multiple occasions. I’ve never dealt with hail a lot more than an inch across, but I’m guessing that if there had been any baseball sized chunks then those pots could have been quickly demolished.
However, because the quantity of fragile plants in my garden grew, it became somewhat unrealistic to have a pot for every plant, and run outside to place each one of these before significant damage had already occurred. After much thought, I ended up creating a horizontal, retractable screen mechanism made out of a powerful but flexible wire mesh. At any sign of rain I possibly could pull the screen out over my entire garden and also have instant protection. Not only made it happen let the rain through, however the collected hail provided a stable drip of water as much as a day afterwards. This project cost me hundreds of dollars, and much more blood, sweat, and tears than could be measured with earth dollars. Therefore I wouldn’t recommend it to everybody.
If it’s too late for you, and you’ve recently lost your precious plants to wicked balls of ice, then you’re probably looking for a way to help the plants recover. Unfortunately there aren’t many choices for you. The best thing you should do is give them the tender care they deserve, and try to nurse them back to health over a long time. The numbers of weeks after seriously being damaged by hail were essential to whether the guarana plant survives or not. Should you expect more rain or wind, you need to keep the plant covered. Within this brittle stage, even raindrops or perhaps a strong breeze could cause more damage. If you live in a place that experiences frequent hail, you should definitely have in place some emergency arrangements for protecting your plants. Sitting by and watching them be ripped to shreds should never be a choice!
Preparing your garden for the winter
Some people believe that once the weather starts getting colder and the leaves start to fall, it’s about time to store the gardening tools and wait until next spring to operate on their garden again. Wrong. Winter is an important time to keep your garden’s health and assure yourself a good crop for next year. You might think that might take too long to prepare your garden, but the fact is that it requires less than 1 day to organize your garden for the upcoming winter. Once the nighttime temperatures drop to less than forty-five degrees Fahrenheit for over four days in a row, or frost is forecasted for your area (usually around late October or November) you know it is time to begin setting up your garden. You need to start by evaluating your garden design, check which plants grew well in the previous season, and which plants didn’t do well. Fall is a good time to choose which plants will stay in your garden next year, and which ones should go. It is also a great time to choose which new plants you wish to grow. For making your garden more colorful and healthy, be sure only to plant the more hardy plants during the fall to enable them to withstand the winter. Some plants that will do fine being planted in fall are: rudbeckia, Aster Novi-belgii, Anemone Japonica, panicle hyandea, endive, escarole, and Brussels sprouts. You could find most of these and more in gardening magazines or your local nursery.
After you have finished this you need to begin cleaning up your garden. Start by taking out weeds that could have cropped up, and raking fallen leaves. Weeds and rotten leaves can carry insects and diseases that could be bad for your garden. You should also rid your garden of spent annual plants, and harvest your vegetables and other plants that can’t tolerate the winter weather. After fall has come and gone, the leaves will likely be off your trees and you could see the rotten branches. Cutting off the unwanted branches from the trees is not needed to your gardens health, but may help later on by not dropping branches on your plants and not blocking too much of the sun.
If you have younger trees you should consider wrapping them and supporting all of them with stakes to help them survive the winter wind and cold. Putting mulch over your plants for the winter can be a helpful way to protect your garden from sudden temperature changes and heavy snow. For mulch you can use about five inches of shredded bark, pine needles, or a variety of other materials. You need to be careful not to mulch too early, because some insects might still be alive and able to take shelter in it for the winter. Once you are finished with your gardening tools, you need to clean them and make sure they’re in a safe place where they will not rust and you know where they’ll be for next year. Before winter comes you should always set out slug repellent, as slugs are one of the worst bugs to have in your garden. If you have a pool or fountain in your garden, make sure to consider out any fish which you have in them and bring them inside. There’s nothing sadder than a fish frozen in a block of ice.
Hope these tips help you protect your garden during cold weather. If you still don’t know what to do, 
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