Gusty winds are predicted through Monday. Here’s how I’m protecting my teeny tiny plants.
I live in the desert. It gets windy here! It gets really gusty, and all that blowing dust can take you by surprise. Many a day have I squinted at the sky, wondering if it’s pollution or dust. Streets close, the haze grows thicker, and inevitably, there will be posts on Nextdoor the next morning seeking lost patio umbrellas and unsecured kayaks that got blown entire blocks away from their origin. It’s quite entertaining and makes me snicker, while at the same time, I am guilty of chasing down my Halloween decorations as they whirled down the street.
I’m not the best at learning from my mistakes, but I do remember the disappointment I felt last summer when the wind whipped through my garden and decimated my plants. Their tender stems didn’t stand a chance with the heat and wind. That’s why I rush out and do what I can for my plants whenever there’s 60 mph wind gusts coming. My husband laughs at me, but I am not having another sad plant season.
The easiest thing to do would be to put all my containers into the garage for a day. I tried that with every single plant during Hurricane Hilary, and while most of my little colony did okay, I did lose a cactus to root rot. I can’t just put all my plants in the garage this time for a couple reasons. It’s 100 degrees so my garage is also sweltering, and I have plants in the raised beds that need protecting. The secret garden is basically a wind tunnel. I’ve been playing around with how to mitigate that but haven’t made headway yet.
The last wind storm we had came right after I had set out my tomato plants in containers. I looked around for something, anything to block the wind, my face already gritty with blowing sand. This was so terrible because it was already dark outside and I was fighting the wind and trying to find a solution by myself. I found some pots, but this required me to take out the tomato cages and plop each pot inverted on top of the tomato plants. I put the cage around the containers with the round side down. Then I took a rock and set it on top of the upside-down pot so the cheapy plastic things wouldn’t blow down the street. Works like a charm and fine enough for tiny plants.
I actually found a pretty decent way to keep most of the wind out of a larger plant by desperation. My red pepper plant was already too big for an inverted pot and leaning pretty heavily on its cage, so during that last storm I worried it would get all its leaves blown off. It’s happened before with other plants and all that is left is the stem and a twisted leaf or two – and a garden full of broken dreams. So I was looking around the garage trying to preemptively fix this problem and have this Not Happen Again, and that’s when I noticed the box of shop towels. Shop towels are so awesome, but my husband hates the box we got at Costco. He’d rather have regular rolls of them but being frugal we need to use up the box first. So I figured there would be no harm in helping the shop towels along for my cause. With a little duct tape to secure the blue towels from flapping around, it survived and the red pepper is doing better than ever. I’m not counting my pecks before they are picked, but I daresay I might get one or two peppers from that plant this year.
So, back to this evening’s little wind shindig. First, I did the shop towel trick on the red pepper and cucumbers.
Then, I put inverted pots on top of the broccoli plants.
Lastly, I tried something new on the elevated planter to protect the peas and nasturtiums.
Yep, that’s my kid’s old crib sheet! I created sort of a lean-to that I’m hoping won’t blow into the neighbor’s yard.
Anything is better than waking up to a garden full of nothing but stems after you’ve faithfully tended to the plants each day and never getting to see the full potential.
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