The Weather And Your Organic Garden

Weather is a nuisance. You just cannot depend on Mother Nature to provide the things your plants need in the correct proportions — ample sunlight and balanced rainfall seem forever elusive. Some days, the weather just goes over the line with heat wave after heat wave rivaling Death Valley. And on other, it seems like an endless monsoon straight out of “One Hundred Years of Solitude“. Weather is like a fifteen-year-old … its actions depend on its mood.

Whatever the circumstance the contemporary gardener has to face, there are always ingenious solutions thought of by our ancestors through the years or a new technique developed by brilliant agricultural scientists and/or engineers. The gardener has some extra tools in his/her pocket, aside from the commonplace rake and cutter, to aid the garden and help it to be at its best all the time.

Dealing With Heat And Drought

This is like a death sentence for a plant. The heat of the sun in one seemingly random day pierces its cuticle so much it can actually feel it slicing through its skin and crumbling its delicate parts. Very soon, its life will be in jeopardy and it will be a hapless and useless brown thing, with nothing to contribute to the garden in general but a load of stress.

To attack these horrid heat waves that happen every now and then, you should go back to the tools of organic gardening and maybe venture into container gardening. For the former, you should utilize the assistance of compost since it helps hold some essential nutrients and water so that the plant will have more longevity and therefore, can withstand heat waves. But you could also opt for the tried and tested rule of human intervention. When you think that the plant is getting too much of unsolicited sunlight, you may always provide some shade to protect the plant from it. You also have the choice of watering the plant at a frequent but reasonable manner so that it gets it needed water quota.

For container gardening, it can benefit the plant by its inherent quality of mobility. Given that, it helps the plant evade notorious heat waves common in tropical places by simply moving it to a shaded area. Don’t forget to put some compost in the container to help it hold.

Rainy Seasons

For thirty minutes, rain is simply a blessing for plants. But in longer and more frequent amounts, it is like shoving burgers into a persons mouth. Save it from plant obesity and subsequent death by adjusting a few variables in your gardening plan.

First, you have to regulate the compost and fertilizer content in your garden. The thing is, you have to give a little of these two things because the former holds water while having the latter will be useless since water carries the nutrients to other places due to mass. Given these two potential events, it is important for the gardener to rely on rare sunlight and let go of water-holding compost.

What’s Worse?

Recurring rain is in no way worse or better than heat waves. Both hamper the plants development, but the rainy season puts a certain ceiling on the plants growth as opposed to heat waves, which kills it continually but is avoidable. This ceiling cannot be avoided. Thus expect slow growth in part of the plant because it is simply inevitable. But you should still protect the plant because it could die; the rain practically trying to drown the plant.

Apparently, these two situations can be completely avoided by container gardening, which uses its inherent ability of mobility to escape such danger; but, it isn’t exactly as glorious as a full-fledged garden. With that said, be careful of choosing what type of garden that you want.

There are a lot of ways you can avoid the disasters that come with horrid weather fluctuations. The methods described above are tried, tested and successful, but you can use human ingenuity to deter these impeding problems. You can use a retractable shade to avoid your plant from drowning and a fence to avoid water flowing into your garden. Its all on you. Just master the fundamentals of organic gardening and you’ve got a good foundation to build on your ideas in avoiding the problems that come with teenage-like weather.