Be a Weather Watching Gardener
By Melinda Myers

[January 18, 2025]  Each gardening season seems to offer new growing challenges. Our gardens are exposed to more drastic and variable weather with changing weather patterns. Floods, droughts, wind, temperature extremes, and unseasonable weather episodes can have immediate and long-term impacts on our plants.


Monitoring and noting these occurrences will help you diagnose immediate and future plant and garden problems. It also reminds us to adjust plant maintenance when these stressors occur and watch for potential insect, disease, and plant decline that may appear in the future.

Create your own weather station with a rain gauge, snow gauge, and high-low thermometer. These gauges monitor the conditions in your backyard as opposed to those reported for nearby locations. Having information from your yard allows you to make any needed adjustments to watering and care to help your plants thrive.

Record significant weather extremes that can negatively impact plant health and longevity. Check with local nature centers, botanical gardens, and extension services for gardening calendars. Many include information on significant weather events in your area. You can then add your observations for future reference. Refer to this information as needed in the future to help diagnose plant problems that may result from these extremes.

Large trees and other established plantings are often overlooked when weather extremes occur. Extended dry periods, temperature extremes, and flooding can stress and weaken these plants making them more susceptible to insect pests, diseases, and decline in the coming years.

 Always select plants suited to the growing conditions and start watching for those that appear to be more tolerant of extremes. Visit local public gardens and consult with your University Extension specialists and other plant experts when selecting new plants for your gardens.

Adapt your landscape maintenance and design to reduce the negative impact of flooding, drought, and temperature extremes. Protect plant roots from temperature extremes with a layer of organic mulch. Incorporate organic matter into the soil to improve drainage and increase the water-holding ability of fast-draining soils. Cover the soil with plants and mulch to help protect the soil from compaction and erosion during heavy downpours. Healthy soil is the key to growing plants that are better able to tolerate environmental stresses.

Manage water that falls on your property. Check with your local municipality for any restrictions or support for these efforts. Create rain gardens to capture, clean and direct rainfall to groundwater to help manage water where it falls. These also support pollinators and provide added beauty to your landscape. Enlist the help of rain barrels, if permitted, to capture rainwater to use on ornamental plantings and containers when needed.

Take this interest one step further and volunteer to be part of a network of volunteer weather watchers. The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) is a non-profit community-based network of volunteers that provides daily measurements of rain, hail, and snow that fall in their backyards.

The goal of the Network is to provide more localized weather information to scientists, researchers, resource managers, decision makers and more. The data is used for natural resource, educational and research applications.

Weather watching is a great project for the family or classroom. It helps boost gardening success while increasing our awareness and knowledge of what’s happening around us.

Melinda Myers has written over 20 gardening books, including Midwest Gardener’s Handbook, Revised Edition, and Small Space Gardening. She hosts The Great Courses “How to Grow Anything” instant video and DVD series and the nationally syndicated Melinda’s Garden Moment radio program. Myers is a columnist and contributing editor for Birds & Blooms magazine. Myers’ website is www.MelindaMyers.com.

[Photo courtesy of MelindaMyers.com]