Is your garden monsoon-ready? Do you wish to know the trick to escape the gloomy ambiance of the monsoon? Yes, you guessed it right! We can always add more flowers and plants to balance out the melancholic skies. Monsoons are a blessing for any green space. In a country like India, where agriculture is the main occupation, regular and intense rainfalls guarantee a healthy harvest every year.
But what if you own a tiny flat with a small balcony or yard garden? The heavy Indian monsoon can potentially destroy your potted plants. Excessive watering, rodents, and insects can cause water retention, destroying the garden. Hence, the monsoon season is also the time to pay extra attention to your plants and protect them against pests.
As we prepare for the monsoon season, Gharpedia brings you some useful monsoon gardening tips and hacks to protect your garden from the relentless rain.
13 Useful Monsoon Gardening Tips to Create a Charming Home Garden
We have curated a list of 13 monsoon gardening tips for beginners to help ensure your garden remains healthy during the downpours.
01. Protect the Seeds from Monsoon
Let us start right at the germination stage. You can gain a few valuable weeks of early growing time by planting seedlings indoors during the monsoon season. The severe weather might stunt the growth of your plants. One of the initial home garden tips is to protect the seeds from the monsoon.
You can control the levels of humidity and temperature in the interior spaces. Start your seeds indoors in trays or containers and place them on window sills or in another location where they will receive plenty of sunlight. Also, do your research before planting your seeds. Not all plants are suitable to grow in interior spaces or balconies.
02. Ensure Proper Drainage for your Monsoon Garden
The secret to a healthy and thriving garden is a good drainage system and minimal water retention. After all, anything in excess is detrimental. Water logging is a common concern during the rainy season because it affects the growth of plants. When the condition is severe, the roots do not get enough oxygen to breathe and may finally die. As a result, prepare your yard with proper drainage before the monsoon season begins. Grow bags and non-water-retaining potting mix are some actions you can take to improve drainage.
Monsoon care for your potted plants should ideally begin with inspecting the drainage. To begin, make sure each planter has a bottom hole, as most of your plants will rot and die if there is no clean drainage hole, regardless of the weather. After watering, drainage holes allow excess water to seep out of pots, preventing water from accumulating at the bottom and safeguarding sensitive roots from rot, fungus, and bacteria.
03. Store the Excess Water by Rain Water Harvesting
Rainwater harvesting can be an easy solution to avoid the stagnation of rainwater. You can channel the excessive water and store it for future use. Harvesting rainwater may be enjoyable and contribute to the aesthetics of your landscape. Rainwater collection does not necessitate the use of sophisticated systems.
Store rainwater and use it as a sprinkler to refresh plants. Sprinklers ensure that all your plants, trees, and bushes receive uniform nourishment, paving the way for a lush, well-watered, and nourished garden. Rainwater harvesting helps make gardening in monsoons easy.
04. Keep Your Plants in Shape by Monsoon Trimming
You don’t want your garden to grow wild. With fresh life, the summer bloomers produce new shoots and leaflets. Trim your plant as you see appropriate, using pruning and cutting equipment such as secateurs. Secateurs are especially useful for precisely cutting and shaping your plants, helping to remove the cut portions or dead leaves as soon as it starts to rain. It nourishes and boosts the healthy growth of plants during monsoons. To keep your plants in good shape, trimming is one of the best tips for a home garden. This is the ideal time for new shoots to emerge, but they need space. Trimming plants also promotes quicker and healthier growth. Also, winter-blooming plants will want you to eliminate old growth so that they can generate new branches to carry the next year’s blossoms.
05. Do Regular Weeding
This is one of the most underrated monsoon gardening tips. Weeds thrive during the monsoon season. Weeds can disrupt plant nutrients and natural growth. Weeding before the monsoon prevents weeds from taking essential nutrients from the soil. Furthermore, pulling weeds when they are young is easier. However, regular weeding during the monsoon season will safeguard your garden. Remove weeds from your garden before they damage your plants.
06. Make a Shed for Your Garden
The secret to having healthy plants is to keep them out of the rain. It becomes considerably easier if you have a balcony garden. You only need to build an extended sunshade. But what if you have a little backyard garden? You may always use novel solutions, such as a custom garden cloth.
Row covers, also known as garden fabric, are translucent, flexible, and light pieces of fabric used to shield plants from adverse weather. It usually contains polyester and doesn’t trap moisture. On the brighter side, it allows enough light and humidity to penetrate.
07. Bring in The Sunshine
In the gloomy days of the monsoon, sunlight is your plant’s best friend! Shift the plants, especially succulents and cacti, to brighter places at least twice or thrice a week. Inspect the plant’s leaves and stems for deterioration every day. Make sure your pots and containers are in the appropriate spot. Place the containers in a location where the torrential rain won’t batter the plants.
08. Prevent Soil Erosion
The soil will constantly be moist during the rainy season, since there is less sunshine and more rain. This might wash away the nutrients and cause the plants to die. Heavy rains frequently wash away the healthy layer of soil.
As a result, inspecting your soil is another important step in ensuring that your plants grow well. Also, make sure the soil is permeable enough to let rainwater get through without getting blocked in the root region.
09. Support your Delicate Green Friends
Your plants may turn droopy and fragile after occasionally facing the fury of heavy rains. What should you do in such situations?
You may avoid this by constructing a support system for them out of strong bamboo planks. If you have a balcony garden, place your planters adjacent to grills for support. Plants frequently break out or fall due to the intense monsoon winds. You can avoid this by providing a support system for them made of strong wooden sticks securely planted to the ground. Also, some plants might require external support from sticks or a makeshift structure to keep them from toppling over or breaking due to the strong winds.
10. Loosen The Top Soil
Rainwater will naturally water your plants, but you must ensure that the soil absorbs the water. Because of constant watering, soil frequently forms a little lump. Although it is necessary to loosen soil throughout the year, the monsoon season calls for routine soil loosening.
Otherwise, fresh rainwater will not reach the roots. Stagnant water near the stem’s base might induce stem rot or algae. For plants in pots, it is important to take care of the soil mix. Make a mixture of two parts of plant soil and one part of garden manure. This nutrient-rich potting mix will nurture your plants while keeping the soil well-drained. Furthermore, fill the pots, leaving half an inch of space from the brim; if not, add more soil until the container is nearly full. The half-an-inch at the top allows the water to drain quicker without clogging the container. This approach prevents water from reaching empty gaps in the soil since there will be none. Furthermore, loosen the soil whenever possible, as it tends to compact owing to constant rain.
11. Earthworms are your Best Friends
You have probably heard the phrase ‘earthworms are a gardener’s best friend’. Plants occasionally risk losing nutrients due to prolonged periods of heavy rain. So, it makes sense to use organic, slowly-releasing fertilizers during this time.
During the monsoon, plants attract a lot of worms and bugs that you may have to manually remove. However, if you see earthworms, leave them alone because they aid in soil aeration and nitrification. These squirming creatures ensure that water percolates beneath the surface. Hence, if you find earthworms accumulated in one place, pick them up and spread them evenly around the ground to allow fertilization of the soil at all places.
12. Fight The Pests
Pests that are only an inconvenience during the rest of the year become a disaster during the monsoons. With the arrival of the monsoon, slimy algae will start to grow.
You’ll need to get your hands filthy to remove it. In addition to fungus, you may face a variety of parasites and rodents. It is advisable to employ home treatments for pest control, such as neem oil and cow urine. To keep your plants pest-free, apply premium-quality insecticides and natural pesticides for plants, such as neem oil, every ten to fifteen days. Combine five milliliters of high-quality pesticide, one liter of water, and three milliliters of liquid soap. Repeat this every fortnight to keep insects and other diseases away from your plants. You can alternatively create the solution once and store it for future usage.
13. Mulching before Monsoons
Mulching before the onset of the monsoon protects the soil by forming a barrier between the rain and the ground. Heavy rains adversely affect your plants, and hence, adding mulch absorbs the excessive water. Once the mulch is full of water, it slowly releases water back into the soil. All you need to do is lay 2-3 inches of thick mulch before the monsoon arrives. Prepare your soil with organic material before mulching your garden. Mulching is an important monsoon gardening tip.
Understand more about garden mulch and how it is beneficial:
Everything You Need to Know About Mulch!
Don’t Let the Rains Wash Away Your Precious Monsoon Garden!
The monsoon is a boon and a bane, both rolled into one, for your garden. While it brings a new lease of life for all living beings on earth, including your home garden, excess rain can unleash havoc too. To keep your garden looking gorgeous, you must work laboriously on it.
You must put extra effort into making your green space look appealing during the monsoons. However, with these monsoon gardening tips, you can care for your plants even during this gloomy season!
FAQs
01. Can we fertilize plants during the monsoon?
During the monsoon, use natural fertilizers rather than chemicals on plants. It is advisable to fertilise your plants during the monsoon because it is the growth season for plants, and in addition to this, heavy downpours wash away nutrients from the soil, leaving the plant wanting more nutrients.
02. What happens to plants when it rains heavily?
When it rains too much, plants are more likely to develop diseases that manifest as stunting, spots on the foliage, rot on the leaves, stems, or fruit, wilting, and, in the worst case, the loss of the entire plant. Extreme rain also deters pollinators, hurting flowering and maturity.
03. Is it a good idea to plant during the rainy season?
Avoid planting during the wet season. Heavy rain might cause wet conditions even if the garden was first tilled while the soil was dry. Planting in the rain or while the soil is damp can also result in compression when the holes surrounding relocated seedlings get clogged up.
04. Why are my plants dying in the rainy season?
Overwatering plants, especially during this time of year, can cause root rot and, finally, the death of the plant.
05. Which are common flowers in the rainy season?
Hisbiscus, pink rain lily, marigold, jasmine, periwinkle, okra, madhumalti (Chinese Honeysuckle), Champa (Plumeria), etc. are some rainy-season plants that bloom in the monsoon.
06. How can I protect my garden from storms?
Make sure your garden is secure with supports and barriers. Use large bags of potting soil, rocks, or gravel to create wind barriers around your garden.