How to Avoid Crop Damage from Heavy Rain

If you live in an area with a lot of rainfall, you’re likely already well aware of how damaging heavy rain can be to plants and crops. Not only can extensive rain damage and destroy small plants, but flooding can also easily wash them away or result in rot and mold. To help ensure your important crops aren’t damaged before harvesting season arrives, we’ve written up a number of helpful tips below explaining how to successfully protect your plants from heavy rain and flooding.

Rain Prep 

While it’s not always possible to know when torrential rain is going to hit, if you live in an area with some exceptional storms come spring and summer, it may be wise to prep yourself for the worst. This means digging small foot-deep drainage ditches in between each row of crops or using stones and sand to redirect rainwater away. We also advise purchasing a row cover to help protect your plants while they’re still in their earlier stages of life, as well as an excess of mulch. Before the rain begins to fall, you can quickly place a 3-inch layer of mulch around your crops to ensure they don't wash away in the storm. 

Follow-Up Care 

While the tips above should help you save as many crops as possible, we can’t guarantee that every plant will make it out unscathed. After the worst of the storms have passed, we recommend going out into the fields and carefully inspecting your crops. Rot or mold is likely to appear after extremely heavy rains, and can be passed from one plant to another. If you notice rot on one of your crops, do your best to remove them—or the affiliated part—as soon as possible. If you placed down mulch and it still hasn’t dried after a few days, be sure to remove it completely, as this could also result in mold. 

Looking for more tips or advice on how to protect your crops from the rain? Then consider visiting us here at Mike Cooper Tractors! Our expert staff will be happy to answer your questions, make recommendations, and introduce you to some of our many tools available to help you with even your most difficult farming tasks! If you’re located nearby in Tulsa or Muskogee, Oklahoma, we hope to see you here soon at our location in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma.