Category: Sustainability

Categories
Backyard Wildlife Gardening Sustainability

Plant Milkweed Now to Help Monarchs

Plant Milkweed Now to Help Monarchs

by Carolyn Hasenfratz

If you have been doing any reading about gardening lately, you have probably encountered many articles urging people to plant milkweeds for Monarch butterflies whose numbers have declined at an alarming rate in recent years. At the risk of bringing up a topic again that is already well-covered, I will mention milkweeds because right now is a great time to plant them. Milkweed seeds need a period of cold in order to germinate. Last year I simulated that effect by cold-stratifying Common Milkweed and Swamp Milkweed seeds in the refrigerator – a successful effort that resulted in many new plants. This year I’m going to use nature to accomplish the task.

The photo above shows a Monarch caterpillar on the left and monarch chrysalis on the right on swamp milkweed in my garden. My proudest garden achievement of 2015!

The most recent issue of Missouri Conservationist has a timely article about planting milkweeds. They recommend planting the seeds outdoors in January or February in weed-free bare soil. Press the seeds into the soil. If planting into pots, sprinkle 1/4 inch of soil on top of the seeds and press down. Place the pot in a sunny exposed area and water regularly after the seeds sprout. Transplant after the plants have two to three sets of true leaves.

If you start milkweed seeds this winter you will probably not get any flowers from your milkweeds until next year, but caterpillars can still use them as a host plant until then. Try planting some annuals among them to add color and hide leaves that caterpillars have chewed until you get blooms. When they do flower, get ready for quite a show of winged visitors! Schnarr’s carries three varieties of Milkweed seeds – pick some up now to improve your habitat!

Categories
Backyard Wildlife Gardening Sustainability

Gardening for the Birds

Gardening for the Birds

In Feburary, I attended a lecture “Naturescaping: Gardening for the Birds and their Friends”, sponsored by the The Saint Louis Urban Farm & Sustainable Development Group. The speaker was Mitch Leachman, Executive Director of the St. Louis Audubon Society and coordinator of their Bring Conservation Home program.

I’ve been gardening partly to benefit birds for over 10 years now. I’m not allowed to have bird feeders where I live, but I can provide a water feature and plants that help provide food, shelter and nest materials. I also have permission from the Condo Association for a nest box, which was used by Carolina Wrens this past summer. I refrain from using pesticides to help ensure that the bugs in my garden are safe for birds to eat. Like a lot of people, I am also interested in invertebrate conservation, so I have planted several species of plants specifically to be used as host plants for butterflies and as habitat for beneficial insects.

One of the factors that helps birds to successfully raise young is the ability to find food. Seeds and nectar feeders are great for feeding adult birds, but most wild baby birds need lots of animal protein. One amazing statistic that Mr. Leachman shared with us is that it takes the equivalent of 6-9,000 caterpillars to raise one brood of chickadees! That’s a staggering amount of invertebrates. Hummingbirds don’t feed nectar to their young – they feed tiny caterpillars, wasps, bees, gnats and spiders. Clearly one of the best ways to help birds is to learn more about how to co-exist with invertebrates. Some of them don’t need to be controlled and of those that do, there are ways to manage them that minimize harm to other species.

Two examples of native plants, Purple Coneflower and Mistflower that help attract birds..

Most of us have been raised to think of all invertebrates as something that must be eliminated from our environment, but if you think of them as bird food, some of them might be acceptable in your yard or garden. “Bird-friendly means insect-friendly”, stated Mr. Leachman. Caterpillars are often tolerated by people better than other insects because they grow into beautiful butterflies and moths. They can be very attractive in their own right. Caterpillars are also excellent bird nutrition – they are soft and have a very high protein content. You can grow caterpillars in your garden with non-native plants as I do with Queen Anne’s lace and Rue, but you’ll get more caterpillars if you plant native plants. Fall is a great time to plant trees, shrubs and perennial plants – if you choose native plants that are used as host plants by moths and butterflies, you will help feed a lot of birds.

Native plants have had more time to evolve with our native butterflies and moths. Therefore, as Mr. Leachman pointed out, native plants can be utilized as host plants by many, many more species of butterflies and moths. To name a couple of extreme examples, Oaks are used by 518 species and Hostas are used by none (yes slugs eat them but no larvae of butterflies or moths use them as a host plant). Large trees, understory trees, shrubs, herbaceous plants and ground covers can all be good host plants, and native plants are available in all of those categories for all growing conditions. Native plants are available at some nurseries – don’t try to take them from the wild because many native plants are endangered along with native birds.

Besides choosing native plants as host plants, here are some other things you can do to make your garden produce more bird food:

  • Do less tidying up in the garden – removing plant debris destroys many cocoons and overwintering creatures. If you can’t let leaves, dead plants and other natural materials alone in your whole garden without getting grief from your Homeowners Association or neighbors, try experimenting with an out-of-the-way section to conserve some of the insects.
  • Plant fruiting plants that bear at varying times of the year.
  • Plant a good variety of species – if plant diversity is low, insect diversity is low.
  • Plant large bunches of host plants so they are easier to find rather than scattered individual specimens.
  • Care for the total ecology of your garden or yard – the whole food web will be healthier and more productive.

Many common birds in Missouri are in decline – several have lost 60-70% of their numbers in the last 40 years. Feeding and watching birds is the second most popular hobby in the USA after gardening. To make sure there is always a variety of birds to watch, you can make your part of the environment healthier for birds! And you can further help your local bird families with items we have at Schnarr’s, such as feeders, seed, suet, nest boxes and bird bath heaters!

Additional resources:

Create a Songbird Haven with Natives
Landscaping with Native Plants: A Gardener’s Guide for Missouri
Xerxes Society – Invertebrate conservation
What’s That Bug – A good place to look up unknown critters to see if they really need to be controlled or not
Beneficial Insects in the Garden

Categories
Gardening Sustainability

Fall Garden Cleanup

Fall Garden Cleanup

In my previous article “Make a Garden Sign Out of a Recycled Produce Crate” I explained that I wanted signs to let the groundskeepers at my condo complex know that I did not want them to remove the fall leaves from my garden, especially with leaf blowers, or trim or spray the plants. The condo management has agreed to let me manage fall garden cleanup myself this year as an experiment and has let the landscaping company know to leave my garden alone. Here are the reasons why I think this will improve my garden:

  • When the leafblowers remove the leaves, they also knock over my plants, blow away plant tags, blow away fertilizer, blow my mulch into the lawn and blow seeds out into the lawn which makes the lawn weedy and my plants less likely to reseed themselves.
  • Trimming the plants in the fall destroys hibernating beneficial insects and removes winter food and cover for birds from the garden.
  • The resulting bare soil is more likely to erode and I lose plants over the winter due to the soil drying out and freezing more deeply than it would with a natural cover.
  • I have to water more often to compensate for the lost moisture and that costs the condo complex money.
  • My gardening space is all part shade and shade plants are adapted to living under tree litter for the most part rather than bare soil so it’s difficult to get things to grow.
  • The groundskeepers don’t necessarily know which plants I want and which ones I don’t and they often spray the wrong ones with herbicide. I can’t label them because the leaf blowers blow the markers away. Even if they always sprayed the right ones, I don’t want poison around my home. I’d rather pull the weeds and compost them or smother them with lasagna gardening.

So how do I propose to handle garden cleanup this fall?

One of the first gardening books I bought after moving into my condo was “Making the Most of Shade” by Larry Hodgson since I was new to shade gardening at the time. I haven’t reviewed it for awhile so I got it out to see if it had anything helpful about managing leaves.

Here is some of what Hodgson has to say about removing leaves and dead plant material in the fall:

“It doesn’t help the plants in any way, and it removes the organic matter that would have decomposed on the spot to feed the plants… …I find the less I disturb plants, the better they grow.”

The kind of fall cleanup I’d like to do is none at all. Will that work? I know the groundskeepers will need to remove leaves from the lawn, because the lawn will die if they are not removed or chopped up on the spot. My garden will be a nuisance if leaves blow off of it onto the lawn and I don’t want to cause problems. I plan to toss some wood chip mulch over the leaves periodically to keep the leaves in place. If the resulting leaf/mulch piles threaten to exceed 8 inches in depth (if you go over that you may harm tree roots) then I plan to remove some of the leaves and either chop them and return them to the garden or use them in one of the other two gardens I help manage. My perennial plants if left alone should do some of the work of holding leaves in place also.

The trees around my condo are almost all oaks and I’ve read that oak leaves may form a mat which keeps water from getting through to the ground and they are also slow to break down. Nitrogen helps dead leaves break down faster, so whenever I apply wood chip mulch I will also add some high-nitrogen organic fertilizer.

I’m also going to experiment with growing oats as a cover crop over the leaves in spots. I’m already having some success with growing oats in leaf mounds with no soil added in a client’s garden. If I have the same results in my garden the oats should be helpful. I hope that the oats will perform four tasks for me:

  1. Help hold leaves in place.
  2. Pierce leaves with their roots so that water can get through.
  3. Feed small birds with their seed heads.
  4. Decompose after they die and eventually feed my other plants.

The oats die off in winter so they should not become weedy. Schnarr’s can special order some oats for you so you can try this in your own garden if you’re interested in cover crops.

Stay tuned for a report on the results of my experiments!

Categories
Gardening Sustainability

Lasagna Gardening

Lasagna Gardening

What is Lasagna gardening? No, it’s not growing delicious tomatoes and herbs that you can put in your lasagna, though you may eventually be able to do just that depending on your conditions. Lasagna gardening, also known as sheet composting, is an organic gardening method that entails covering the ground with layers of materials of organic origin and allowing them to naturally break down over time. The benefits of this method are less time and labor spent weeding and tilling, creating healthy soil for healthier plants, and reaping the many benefits of compostable materials instead of wasting them.

If you are thinking of starting a new garden bed next spring, fall is a good time to begin it and lasagna gardening is a good method to use if your chosen ground is covered with vegetation that you want to kill off. I’m demonstrating with a section of a shade garden that is covered with liriope. I like it but I have too much of it so I want to get a section ready to put in something new later. If you’ve ever tried to dig up lirope you can imagine how much time I will save by just smothering it! This method works for grassy areas also or any piece of ground covered with unwanted vegetation. Here is what my section of garden looked like before I started.

Liriope that I want to smother with lasagna gardening.
Ironically, the Liriope that I want to smother with lasagna gardening is the best looking plant in this section right now. The Bee Balm on the left and the Columbine on the right are not at their best in late summer. Next spring they will be gorgeous!

First gather up all the compostable materials that you can. The first layer consists of cardboard, paper, newspapers and other recyclable paper based products. I have been saving for a couple of months so there is more than enough for this section.

Mark off the space that will become your garden. You can transplant the vegetation already on the spot if you need it elsewhere. If it’s ok to kill it, just cover the area with several layers of cardboard and paper without leaving gaps in between. If it’s windy, wet the paper as you go – I dunked mine in a bin of water before applying. The paper will block the light and kill the vegetation underneath which will decompose and eventually become plant food.

Lasagna gardening helped me get some good use out of junk mail, product packaging, and other unwanted paper products.
Lasagna gardening helped me get some good use out of junk mail, product packaging, and other unwanted paper products. This is about five grocery bags full.

Wet the layer after you’re done applying it if it’s not already wet. This helps jump start the decomposition process.

Build subsequent layers by alternating green and brown compostable materials. Examples of brown materials are dried leaves, shredded paper, and dried dead plant materials. Green materials are grass clippings and fruit and vegetable scraps from your kitchen. Layering the green in between the brown helps to break the pile down faster, but it will eventually break down even if you have a small amount of green materials in comparison to brown. Add in whatever else you would normally put in the compost – eggshells, coffee grounds, and the like. In my case since I live in a condo community where people walk their dogs nearby, I didn’t want interesting odors to attract them to my garden so I left out the kitchen scraps and used only paper and cardboard.

If you want to do some fall planting, you can put soil and fertilizer on top of your compostables and plant now. If you are planting on top of tree roots, don’t make your layer more than 8 inches thick as anything deeper may kill tree roots, according to the book “Making the Most of Shade” by Larry Hodgson. If there are no tree roots to damage, you can make the lasagna 12 inches thick. I don’t know what I’m going to plant yet or whether I’m going to plant in spring or fall, so I topped off mine with wood chip mulch.

Wood chip mulch protects the lasagna gardening area until I'm ready to plant.
Wood chip mulch protects the lasagna gardening area until I’m ready to plant.

When I’m ready to plant I plan to just add soil on top of the mulch, because my lasagna is nowhere near 8 inches thick yet and it won’t hurt to make the new bed deeper. I’ll add nitrogen-rich organic fertilizer at the time to accelerate the breakdown of the wood chips.

Categories
Backyard Wildlife DIY Gardening Sustainability Upcycling

Upcycled Butterfly Feeder

Upcycled Butterfly Feeder

This project was so easy that I worked on it up at the Schnarr’s cash register between customers!

When I got a new dishwasher this spring, I decided to get rid of my broken garbage disposal rather than purchase a new one. When it was working, I rarely used it anyway since I composted almost anything that would normally go down it. In a way it’s kind of a bad habit because I already have more than enough stuff but I do enjoy saving odds and ends of things I might be able to re-use and seeing if I can make them into something useful. My Dad installed my new dishwasher for me and removed the old garbage disposal and he gave me several ringlike parts that he thought I might be able to use for something. One of them fits perfectly a glass part of a broken fountain/mister that someone else gave me.

Ring from garbage disposal and glass dish
Ring from garbage disposal and glass dish.

The glass bowl-like object rests nicely in the ring, so I decided to make a butterfly feeder out of it. The ring has three rolled tabs protruding around the outside edge. It was an easy matter to thread some chain through these tabs to suspend the feeder. From Schnarr’s I purchased some chain of a suitable guage and some small s-hooks to link the chain pieces together.

First I made three short equal lengths of chain. I pulled chain links apart with pliers to separate.

Short lengths of chain
Short lengths of chain.

Next I threaded the small chain pieces through the rolled tabs to make loops, securing each with a small s-hook that I pinched closed.

Connecting chain pieces to ring tabs with s-hooks
Connecting chain pieces to ring tabs with s-hooks.

Next I cut three equal longer lengths of chain and secured them to each small loop by pinching closed the other end of each s-hook. Then I gathered the three chain lengths together and the top and secured them with another s-hook which can be used to suspend the feeder from a beam, tree branch or stand.

With longer pieces of chain added for hanging
With longer pieces of chain added for hanging.
Finished butterfly feeder hanging from a beam above my deck
Finished butterfly feeder hanging from a beam above my deck.

 

At right is how the finished butterfly feeder turned out.

What food should one put in a butterfly feeder? If you have visited the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House in Faust Park you have probably seen plate feeders stocked with fruit in the conservatory. Butterflies like to sip juices from the fruit and according to Sally Roth, author of one of my all-time favorite gardening books “Attracting Butterflies & Hummingbirds to Your Backyard”, they like it even better if it’s fermenting. That’s a good way to get use out of fruit that has gone bad.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Butterflies feeding on overripe bananas
Butterflies feeding on overripe bananas at the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House.

Other foods that Roth suggests offering in butterfly feeders:

  • A clean chemical-free sponge or kitchen scrubber soaked in sugar water
  • Meat and fish scraps – especially if they are juicy
  • Fungi – if you don’t like to leave the fungal growths that pop up spontaneously in the garden in place, you could add them to the butterfly feeder – the butterflies will appreciate it!

It is evident that some foods that butterflies like are not attractive to humans. What you choose to add to the feeder may depend on your tolerance for odors or the possibility of attracting other wildlife. If you do not want other insects such as wasps and bees to access the food, you can make a cover from window screen or wire mesh that will allow the butterflies to poke their long proboscises through the screen into the food while excluding other insects.

I’m writing this toward the end of summer so there is not a whole lot of time this year for butterflies to make use of my new feeder. When the weather gets too cold for butterflies I’ll hang the feeder from a ceiling hook near a window in my home and use it as a plant hanger! In the fall I can always use extra space for plants when it’s time to bring them inside – they have a way of multiplying in the warm months, don’t they? I’ll put the feeder back out in late winter, perhaps even before flowers are in bloom, so that early-emerging butterflies can get something to eat if they need it.

Categories
DIY Gardening Sustainability Upcycling Ways With Wood

Make a Garden Sign Out of a Recycled Produce Crate

Make a Garden Sign Out of a Recycled Produce Crate

What you’ll need:

Thin wood produce crate
Sturdy screwdriver or pry tool*
Saw*
Wide masking tape*
Paint*
Paintbrush*
Decorative stencils
Optional: Letter and number stencils*
Sponge or sponge brushes*
Temporary palette (freezer paper* or old plastic lid)
Drill*
Hammer*
Outdoor varnish*
Nails*
Brads*

*Available at Schnarr’s

In a previous article I described stenciling with paint on a wood garden sign. That works great if you don’t want a lot of small words but I found myself in need of some new garden signs that would require a lot of text on them. I decided to find a way to computer generate the text and put it on a weatherproof sign. In the past I had purchased produce from a co-op and had saved a couple of the thin wood crates thinking they would be useful for garden markers of some kind. I decided to make small signs from this wood and print out my text on clear acetate and attach that to the signs with brads.

I have some special gardening challenges where I live. I want to have a Permaculture garden. Different people will define Permaculture slightly different ways but the easiest way I can explain it is that I want to manage my garden in a way that works with nature instead of fighting it in order to save both labor and money. Surrounding my condo are large Oak trees which deposit mass quantities of leaves each season. The types of plants that thrive under trees are adapted to grow in the conditions created by a yearly deposit of leaf litter which is not removed but left to decay in place. However since I live in a condo, the leaves are removed by the groundskeepers which causes a lot of problems. I have mostly perennial plants which are not intended to be replaced each year. The leaf blowers make the plants look bent and bedraggled, as if they’d just been power-washed. The plants need the winter protection provided by leaves, so I have more die-off than I should. Leaf litter helps soil retain moisture and most shade-adapted plants like moist soil. When the naturally provided soil protection is stripped off, the soil dries out too much. I can see why a plant seller would be happy about this, but I’m a plant consumer and I’d rather keep the ones I have rather than keep buying new ones! To keep plants alive I have to water more which costs the condo complex money. I can and do put down mulch, but the leaf blowers blow a lot of it into the lawn which doesn’t help either my garden or the lawn to look it’s best.

I think my garden would look a lot better and be healthier and require less maintenance if the groundskeepers would leave it alone. I have explained the situation to the condo management and they have agreed to let me deal with the leaves myself this season and keep the leaf blowers away as an experiment. Getting the agreement is one major step forward, getting the groundskeepers to comply will be another challenge. I don’t expect the groundskeepers to remember which is my garden, there are around 1,500 units where I live. So I obtained permission to install six signs to place around my garden which would read: “PERMACULTURE GARDEN. Please do not remove leaves, trim plants, or spray plants. Please do not use leaf blowers. Please do not allow dogs in garden. Thank you!” I worked this text out in computer graphics software and for good measure added icons to represent no leaf blowers, no spray and no peeing dogs. I looked online for the graphics and was amused by how many choices of “No leaf blowers” icons there are! I must not be the only person who finds they interfere with my gardening techniques.

Computer generated content for signs.
Computer generated content for signs.

These signs will have to be somewhat prominent to be seen, so I tried to make them as attractive as possible and harmonious with my gardening style. First I pried apart the salvaged wood produce crates to get the wood pieces, then I cut them into 8 inch long sections. For each sign I placed two pieces together and held them together in the back with a piece of wide masking tape. This created a roughly square sign (8 x 7.5 inches).

I painted a rough square of off-white paint in the middle of each sign, treating the edges very loosely for a rustic look. Then I used some medium avocado-green paint to stencil botanical designs around the edges. See my previous article Stencil a Wood Garden Sign for detailed information on how to stencil on wood. Then I painted the backs and fronts with several coats of weatherproof varnish.

Sign ground after painting, stenciling and varnishing.
Sign ground after painting, stenciling and varnishing.

Then I took my computer generated text to a copy shop and got six copies printed in reverse on clear tranparencies. The reason for printing in reverse is that I think the ink will hold up better to the weather if it’s on the back of the clear film.

Next I punched four holes in the corners of the pieces of film and drilled four corresponding holes in each sign. Then I attached the film to the wood with brads.

I purchased six wooden stakes from Schnarr’s, sanded them and varnished those as well. Then I nailed the signs to the stakes and installed them.

Finished garden sign.
Finished garden sign.

Here is one of the six finished signs! If all goes well and I actually get the opportunity, I will write about how I chose to deal with the fall leaves and what the results were.

Categories
Gardening Lawns Sustainability

Garden Maintenance in Wet Weather

Garden Maintenance in Wet Weather

The unusually wet weather we’ve been having in the St. Louis area is causing my garden to flourish like never before – for now. In periods of heavy rain you should check your garden and yard for possible detrimental effects. Here are some things to look for.

1. Check and see if your mulch is washing away. If it is, replace it quickly so that the next rainstorm doesn’t wash your soil away.

2. Make sure plant roots haven’t been exposed. Replace the soil around them if that’s the case.

3. Heavy rains can wash away fertilizer – reapply compost and organic fertilizer. The reason I recommend organic fertilizer is that chemical fertilizer is likely to wash away and harm bodies of water that storm runoff washes into. Also if you are not sure how much fertilizer is needed to make up the loss, plants can’t be harmed as easily by excess organic fertilizer as by excess chemical fertilizer, so there is less chance of problems caused by over-feeding.

Here is some more information if you would like to learn more about organic fertilizers:

Benefits of Organic Fertilizers: An Overview

The basic NPK of Organic Fertilizers

4. Do any plants need staking? Since I garden in part shade, it’s not uncommon for some of my plants to lean a bit because they are reaching for more sun, but some are leaning far too much due to being beaten down by storms and need some help. Stakes are not the most attractive things but green stakes and green twine, available at Schnarr’s, help the appearance considerably. Organic fertilizers build stronger plants, according the article “Benefits of Organic Fertilizers: An Overview” on the Dave’s Garden web site, so that is one way to prevent having to do so much staking in the future.

Gardenn maintenance may include cutting back and staking plants

5. Wet weather plus a crowded garden is a recipe for possible fungus problems on your plants. Inspect your plants for signs of fungus and treat the problem if you have to. You might consider thinning plants out or moving container plants farther apart until things dry a bit to facilitate air circulation. Wet weather is kind to transplants, so if you want to do some thinning and start a new bed with the excess plants or give them away to a gardening friend, wet times could be a good opportunity.

Garden maintenance may include staking plants damaged by rain and hail

6. Is your mulch becoming a growing medium for mushrooms and other fungi? Since I use a lot of wood chip mulch, I frequently encounter interesting fungal growths in my garden and with wet weather we are likely to see more than usual. When I see one, I try to find out what it is before I decide if it needs to be controlled. My favorite mycology reference site is Tom Volk’s Fungi.

Garden maintenance may iclude monitoring surprise fungi in the garden

If the fungus doesn’t need to be controlled, my usual practice is to leave it alone since I find the variety of fungi fascinating and beautiful. If you have pets or children, health concerns, or a fungus that is harmful to plants, you may decide control is necessary. While I’m a fan of eating wild foods if I am sure of what it is, I have never eaten a mushroom from my garden no matter how delicious it looks. I am not a mycologist or skilled forager – I recommend only harvesting mushrooms or any wild foods with expert help since the consequences of making a mistake can be catastrophic.

7. Are any spots in your yard becoming a breeding ground for mosquitoes? Check saucers, bird baths, containers, wheelbarrows and anything in your yard that can collect water. You can dump the water, treat it with a mosquito dunk, add a bubbler (mosquitoes prefer still water) or add fish to eat the larvae if that’s feasible. Bats and dragonflies are excellent mosquito predators. Making your yard more hospitable to those species is a great way to increase mosquito defense.

8. Do you see any drainage problems in your yard? Heavy rain can reveal opportunities to improve how water flows across your property. Since I live in a condo, I only have the ability to address small-scale issues – if you have a large-scale problem come into Schnarr’s to talk to our knowledgeable staff. If we can’t address the problem we can recommend an expert to consult. Small-scale problems in my own garden usually consist of spots where excess erosion happens or water tends to puddle due to how rainfall drains off my building. If you are interested in adding a butterfly puddling area, bog garden, rain garden or water feature to your yard, a spot that already collects water is a great place to consider building it. Most of those options are not available to me because of where I live, so I like to control erosion and puddling by digging small trenches to interrupt the water flow and filling them in with lava rock. You can use any kind of gravel for this, but I like lava rock because it fertilizes the soil as it breaks down and the porous nature of the rock provides some natural water filtering capacity. I can extend the trenches to reach areas that I want to get more water and if I cover them up with mulch or plant over them the appearance is harmonious with the rest of the garden.

Such trenches can also become a decorative feature, like these two examples:

Stone and brick used to drain downspout

Ornamental dry creek bed

One puddling problem I had a few years ago was caused by a leak in my soaker hose. The resulting puddle was threatening my neighbor’s air conditioner so I fixed the issue with a gravel filled-trench – that was a quicker solution than digging up the whole hose out of the trench it was in and it bought me time to address the leaking soaker hose later.

Be sure to consult the Missouri One Call system before doing any digging!

I don’t know if a rain chain is particularly functional, but if it adds to your enjoyment of the rainfall why not make one?
Creative DIY Rain Chains

9. If water is puddling around plants and those plants are not of a type that can tolerate such conditions, you can create holes around them with a garden fork to help the water drain away so the roots don’t rot.

If you have a problem area that needs a long-term solution and you don’t want some kind of water-loving garden feature there, you can try moving the plants and building a raised bed in the spot. Fill it with soil that contains a lot of organic matter and soil amendments that facilitate drainage, such as sand or ground up lava rock. Apply organic matter to the surface as well – that will attract earthworms whose burrows will help the water drain. See how much water your new bed tends to accumulate then plant appropriately. The Missouri Botanical Garden plant finder is a great tool for helping to find appropriate plants for special conditions.

Excess rain can be aggravating and destructive, but wet conditions can also be an opportunity to make improvements or add new interesting features. Walk your garden
and yard, observe the effects of rain and see if you get any good ideas!