By Sharon Omahen


University of Georgia

Tomatoes are rotting and trees are toppling, and it’s all from
the rain that Georgians prayed would come.

“Leaves are beginning to turn yellow and accumulated runoff is
damaging tree roots,” said Marco Fonseca, a horticulturist with
the University of Georgia. “Trees are actually falling over
because they’ve lost their adhesiveness to the soil. All this
moisture is causing them to just fall over.”

Fonseca said the state’s four-year drought figures into the
trees’ losing their footing.

From one extreme to another

“We had such a long drought and now it’s the other extreme,” he
said. “The trees have lost their holding power because the root
systems that became shallow during the drought are now being
drowned by the excess rain.”

There isn’t much homeowners can do to save trees in this
condition. Fonseca does suggest homeowners avoid working the soil
around the tree roots.

“Thinning out the trees to help reduce their weight may help, but
that’s about all you can do,” he said.

How do you know if your trees are suspect?

Trees that are suffering will begin to die back on the ends of
the branches. Some trees, like hickories and oaks, will lose
whole branches.

“Some trees’ leaves begin to change colors, which can be the
result of waterlogged conditions,” Fonseca said. “This is
normally a sign that fall has arrived. In this case, it’s a sign
of too much rain.”

Home gardens suffering, too

The abundance of rain has hurt home gardens, too.

“The high humidity and huge downpours of rain are resulting in a
high incidence of disease in home gardens,” Fonseca said.
“Tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and squash have all been affected.”

Aside from the disease stress, fruit-bearing vegetables generally
prefer to be drier, so yields are down, too.

“Home gardeners had a hard time planting their gardens because of
all the rain, and then it was too muddy for them to get into
their gardens to tend them,” he said.

When it’s not too wet to get into your garden to work, most
people can’t stand the heat and humidity that often follow summer
rains in Georgia.

“It’s either pouring like crazy and they can’t get in their
gardens or it’s way too humid,” he said. “It’s really
uncomfortable to work in a garden when the temperature and the
humidity are in the 90s.”

Home gardeners have been calling Fonseca’s office at the UGA
Griffin campus seeking help in fighting diseases on their
homegrown crops.

“Most people are fighting early and late blight or leaf spot
diseases,” he said. “We’re also getting a lot of reports of
blossom end rot, which is caused by an unbalance of water.”

So what is a home gardener to do, aside from sitting back and
watching their prizewinning tomatoes fall to the ground?

Follow these tips

First and foremost, Fonseca says, stay out of the garden if the
leaves are still wet.

“Many diseases move with water, and if you’re in the garden when
it’s wet, you’re helping the pathogens move around from one plant
to another,” he said.

He suggests removing diseased plants, too, as soon as you see
them.

“This helps keep the disease from spreading further and gives the
remaining plants more space for air circulation,” he said.

Fonseca’s last bit of advice may seem obvious: resist the urge to
water your garden.

“Sometimes gardeners think they just need to water,” he said.
“Watch your plants, and they’ll tell you when they need water.
They’ll begin to wilt or start to turn gray.”