Growing a garden when it won’t stop raining

Here in Minnesota, we have had more than our fair share of rain in the last couple of weeks. Many communities along lakes and rivers, especially in southern Minnesota, have unfortunately experienced some pretty bad flooding and my heart goes out to them.

This is a drastic change from these last 3 years where I could not keep up with watering because we were in drought years. In fact, this year we have already had more rain than we did all last year.

In good news, we are no longer in a drought. In bad news, the soil is so saturated there is no place for the water to go.

We did experience some flooding last week. Part of our orchard had 4 inches of standing water which was the biggest shock. Thankfully the water has since drained and the trees are still doing fine. We also had some standing water in one of our largest growing spaces. The water did impact some germination of some corn that we have in that area this year as well as stunting the growth of some peppers, which do not like wet roots.

When this happens, it can feel like you don’t have much control over it which is beyond frustrating.

In June, there should be enough time left in the growing season where most seeds can be replanted. We did replant a couple of things in the past few weeks, and the new seedlings have already germinated.

If you lose plants, you’ll likely be able to find some clearance veggie plants and annuals at your local greenhouse.

I plant a few hanging baskets and pots with dahlias every year, and they were totally saturated. We ended up bringing some of them into our garage to get a chance to dry out because the rain was constant.

If you have any potted veggies or herbs, you can do the same - bring them into a garage or shed for 24-48 hours to let it dry out. That will keep the roots healthy and will ensure they don’t rot.

Most plants love rain - but weeds do as well. Be sure to pull weeds regularly! Thankfully, they come out a lot easier when the ground is moist. We try to hit each growing area at least once per week to give the plants a chance to breathe.

Due to the excessive mud last week, I did not pull any weeds during the week where we had so much rain, and the following week I ended up spending many, many hours weeding. I feel a lot more caught up now, but it doesn’t take long for weeds to overtake a full garden bed.

One of the beauties of gardening is no two years are ever the exact same - yet one of the frustrations of gardening is that no two years are ever the exact same. Every year brings different challenges to solve; new puzzles to work through. I am grateful for the opportunity to do so.