Storm Rains vs Zinnias

For June, we have had nice amounts of soaking rains that really helped our flowers to grow. Unfortunately, we’ve also had torrential downpours and have suffered some damage from how hard it was raining. Our poor zinnias took a beating. Our first succession took the brunt of the deluge. I guess the stems are not quite hard enough and could not compete with the beating rain. Our second succession of zinnias was not affected. We had obvious damage to 3 plants but I’m hopeful two will recover. The third was almost completely broken off, so there is no hope for that one. Other have some leaf damage but should be ok.

25 days after being direct sown, storm damaged zinnia in our flower garden. The stem is completely broken at the soil level.

There are so many things that can go wrong when you are growing flowers. We all know that too much rain can cause issues, and of course, so can too little, but I never thought about the intensity of the rain damaging the plants. It seems so obvious now that those hard rains would be challenging for these baby plants, but before now, I hadn’t thought about rain causing physical damage to the stems. Always something to worry about with these guys!

This zinnia is leaning but the stem is not broken. I’m hoping it will recover and the stem will straighten.