Gardening, my favorite pastime, has become a challenge in the age of climate disruption. That means we need to adapt. Spring is fast approaching, so I’m including some tips in this blog to keep you safe and healthy while gardening.
Last summer, I was desperate to be in my native plant garden after four weeks of languishing indoors due to severe thunderstorms, excessive heat, and poor air quality from pollution and Canadian wildfires.
The day I decided to venture outside, air quality was code orange, so I wore an N95 mask. I was decked out in permethrin treated clothes to ward off deer ticks and a hat with netting in case any hungry adult mosquitoes were in the vicinity. (However, they are welcome to lay their eggs in my mosquito dunk bucket.)
I went outside at 7:15 AM and stopped at 8:45 AM. I normally spend at least four hours playing in my garden, but this morning I was sopping wet after weeding for only 1 ½ hours, despite the cloudy day. It was 72 degrees when I went outside, but heat index (real feel) was 86 due to moisture in the air. I knew I was safe, because heat exhaustion is not an issue until the heat index is 104 for healthy adults, and 90 for those over age 65. By 2 PM, heat index was 99. Good thing I did my gardening early.
Speaking of storms, I learned a new weather word this week—atmospheric rivers. An atmospheric river carries saturated air from the tropics, which results in a long narrow path of heavy rainfall that dumps so much rain in a short period of time that flash flooding is inevitable. I hope that never happens to my garden—or yours.
Gone are the days of care-free gardening. As you can see, we can’t enjoy the great outdoors any time we want anymore. We have to take precautions, like checking not just temperature, but heat index and air quality alerts.
But I’m not the only one who’s challenged. My poor plants are also being affected. My swamp milkweed succumbed to ground level ozone damage. My chrysanthemums start blooming in early July instead of October. Some plants that don’t like excessive moisture are rotting. Trees are dying and even healthy trees are falling over as severe thunderstorms roll through the area.
How climate disruption affects plants
Plants feel the heat too. Higher temperatures cause heat stress, and droughts make it worse. Warmer temperatures cause earlier leaf out and bloom times. Growing zones are changing. Pollinators expect nectar and pollen at a certain time in the gardening season. When bloom times change, what’s a pollinator to do?
Invasive plants are becoming even more aggressive, because higher CO2 levels promote their growth. My garden is suddenly loaded with poison ivy. According to Cornell Cooperative extension, that’s being fostered by climate disruption.
What you can do
- Treat your native plants like Goldilocks. Know their preferences. Give them just right conditions that are not too sunny, too shady, too dry, or too wet.
- Since growing zones are changing, avoid using plants that are near the southern end of their natural range.
- Some plants are on the move for better growing conditions. Help protect wild native plants by joining the effort to preserve the natural corridor areas they need for migration.
- Be an invasive plant detective. If you find invasives, remove them. Do not allow them to gain a foothold on your property.
- Check air quality before venturing out to your garden. Wear an N95 or KN95 mask if you are gardening on poor air quality days.
- Check the heat index to see if it’s safe for you to be outdoors–especially if you are over 65.
I hope this blog helps you to garden safely in the age of climate disruption.
Thank you Marion for such helpful information. I, too, have seen an overwhelming amount of poison Ivy and other invasive plants. My husband and I have been gardening, composting, etc. since 1976, and these negative climate effects have been increasingly annoying.
Yes, and will continue to worsen unless we take action.
FYI from the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/12/realestate/poison-ivy.html
Pop quiz: What’s an ecologically important native flowering plant, found in every one of the continental United States but California, that almost everyone hates?
The qualifier “almost” makes room for the dissenting opinion about poison ivy from Susan K. Pell, a botanist and educator, and the deputy executive director at the United States Botanic Garden in Washington.
Her career-long fascination with poison ivy is not based on a personal immunity to urushiol, the oily resin that is the active compound in all the plant’s parts — from seed and leaf to woody vine — even when it is dormant. Exposure to just 50 micrograms of urushiol, equivalent to less than a grain of table salt, causes a rash in 80 to 90 percent of adults, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health at the C.D.C. …
It’s no surprise that poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) is part of the family that contains poison sumac and poison oak, which are in the same genus. But the Anacardiaceae family also includes cashews (its common name is the cashew family), as well as pistachios, mangos and garden-worthy subjects like smoke trees (Cotinus) and Rhus, commonly called sumac (the genus poison ivy was long placed in). …
Poison ivy is an early successional species: It moves in where a disturbance occurs because of human interference (the result of construction, say, or the continuous mowing of a once-overgrown area) or natural causes (where a tree fell along your property line, for example). Taking advantage of the increased light, the seeds germinate or the underground stems advance.
The enormous system of roots and rhizomes that poison ivy puts down seems like bad news if it’s in your backyard. But this inclination toward Manifest Destiny is poison ivy’s environmental gift.
“It’s doing this important underground work,” Ms. Pell said, “holding onto sand and soil — like along dunes, where you see poison ivy on your way to the beach. It’s a major player in preventing the erosion of our Eastern coastlines.”
Thank you for your comment, Tu. Each gardener will need to decide if poison ivy is ok for his/her property, given their circumstances.
Thanks, Tu! I hadn’t thought about the benefits of poison ivy before. The protection options Google shows me are long sleeves/pants, and skin barrier creams. What works for you?
Hi, I have loved everything you’ve covered in your blog. Keep up the great work.
In response to the Poison Ivy comments, I will say that I agree that I also have seen it proliferate in my garden, which is annoying and itchy, but Poison Ivy is a Native Plant that is really important for the flowers and berries it produces that birds rely on. That being said, certainly invasive plants are proliferating at an alarming rate and putting out the good message that we need to be on the look out for them is so important. But I do think we Native Plant entusiasts ought to educate the new comers to the real dangers of the foreign invaders that are displacing native species.
Thank you, Jonathan. Sounds like it’s time for me to write about invasives again.