RAIN, RAIN, RAIN!

By: Terri Mathis

The last several years we have been in a drought with below average rainfall. This is not the case this year!

 

Our normal annual rainfall for NE Florida is anywhere from 52 -55 inches per year.

Have we reached that yet? You bet your wet boots we have and in some cases surpassed it! We had 30-50 inches of rain in 90 days!

 

So, what’s the problem? This should make up the deficit, right?  Like the old saying goes, “too much of a good thing can be bad for you!” This is definitely a true statement when we are talking about our weather patterns.

Let’s take a look at what our weather pattern has been this year. We started off with a mild winter and went into drought conditions. It seemed like we missed spring all together!

So, we go from drought to extremely high temperatures ranging from 95 to 100 degrees for several weeks. At this point we were praying for a tropical storm. Well we got it in fact a couple of them. We went from dry to extremely wet.

At first it was great. The lawns started to flourish all the dry spots in our lawns recovered quickly and the grass turned a very nice shade of green. But the rain continued to fall and fall.

Our soils got over- saturated with water. This means there will be a lot of problems with roots especially ornamental roots.

Here’s why! Our soils have large and small pores in them. Small pores contain water, large pores contain air. The more the soil is saturated with water, the less room for oxygen. Basically, the roots will suffocate.

Plants show stress a lot later than Turfgrass. By the time you start seeing the pale yellow leaves, it’s too late. We can expect to see a lot of ornamentals die from root issues.

Most shrubs can handle a lot of moisture but not floods and let’s face it; we have had some flooded landscapes.

There is no way to prevent this occurrence and no way to save the ornamental. It cannot be explained why some plants will make it and some will not. It may be that some plants were healthier going into the adverse weather conditions or maybe they were planted a little higher in the soil. Its nature; sometimes beautiful and sometimes destructive!

The point I’m trying to make is this year’s weather pattern is out of the norm so we can expect to have problems in the landscape that are not treatable.

Here’s an interesting fact you might not know:

1 inch of rain on a 1000 horizontal square feet of roof yields 600 gallons of water!

Wow! This is a lot of water pounding on the shrubs around the house.

Perhaps this is a good time to look into old fashioned rain barrels!