This week’s storms blew some branches down in my Minneapolis yard and knocked over a couple of pots. No biggie. But some gardens really took a beating. Hail shredded plants, high winds snapped branches and toppled whole trees. How did your yard fare? Send us your snapshots and sob stories. (We gardeners love to commiserate, you know.)

What can you do about the damage? Well, it sorta depends on how big a hit your garden took. Plants have wonderful regenerative powers. And it’s still early in the season, which will help some plants recover. Here’s what you can do:

Assess the mess. Get in the garden and inspect your plants. Nip off broken stems and any leaves that are badly shredded. Plenty of perennials will survive if even just a bit of foliage is still standing. (True, they won’t look so hot, but they’ll probably make it.) If your annuals and veggies took a hard hit, you may be better off buying new. We’ve got a short growing season and most of us are too impatient to wait for mashed impatiens to come around.

Get damaged trees trimmed. If you have trees with broken branches, call an aborist to cut them off. (Don’t go all DIY on this, unless you’ve had LOTS of experience with ladders and chain saws and (911.)

Get undamaged trees trimmed. Even if your trees fared well, you may want to call an aborist and ask about getting your trees trimmed. A good trim will help them fare better in next week’s storm.

Have a swell Memorial Day weekend!

This entry was posted on Friday, May 25th, 2007 at 11:40 am and is filed under Weather woes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.