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Help :(

Emma1978Emma1978 Posts: 201

I put my cucumber, tomato, courgette, pepper and some other tender seedlings outside today to soak up the lovely sunshine. I went to fetch my daughter from school, and we had a sudden bout of heavy rain and hailstones.......

 

The seedlings are saturated. Please tell me they're not toast image

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Posts

  • GillyLGillyL Posts: 1,077

    Bring back inside and let them dry out a bit and see what happens.Are you growing them in a greenhouse?if so you don,t need to put them outside at all..

  • Poor babies....are the pots standing in trays? if so take them out and empty any residual water. If they were being kept in a GH then pop them back in on the staging so that excess water can drain out. You can tell if they're too wet by picking up the pots...once the weight goes down a bit you can stand them back in the trays....

    Hopefully once they're somewhere warm and dry the excess will evaporate off...of course if they're swimming you might be better off repotting but that seems a waste unless you have shedloads of spare compost. Plants are pretty resilient...a lot depends on how well grown they are. Some of my mine were battered by rain and hail over the weekend but they've recovered.

  • Emma1978Emma1978 Posts: 201

    It's the cucumbers that I'm most worried about.... This is the first year that I've managed to get them to the two-true-leaf stage (they've all been victims of damping off in the past image

  • BookertooBookertoo Posts: 1,306

    As the others say, get them under cover and drain them off - have they got decent drain holes in the base of their little pots?  You can top dress with a little dry vermiculite or such, that helps to mop up the extra water.  Provided they are not actually knee deep in water, but just in vrey wet compost, given a few hours draining, plus no water until they get light weight again, they shoud do.

    infuriating isn't it!!!

  • Emma1978Emma1978 Posts: 201

    I've brought them back in the house, and stood them on top of the telly. Fingers crossed !

  • Zoomer44Zoomer44 Posts: 3,267

    On top of the telly does not spring to mind as the best place to let them dry outimage.

    If the dinning room gets some sun, on the table might be better or a bright spare bedroom, on the window ledgeimage.

  • Emma1978Emma1978 Posts: 201

    I was just thinking that the top of the telly is warm. I stood the plants on saucers, don't worry hhhehehehe

    There are my six cucumber plants on there, the other seedlings are on the dining and living room windowsills. 

    Everything still appears to be alive, and nothing has flopped. I reckon the sweetcorn has grown an inch over night.

    Maybe I'll just just sing to them and hope for the best..... or not image

  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,138

    Well, sweetcorn does need quite a bit of water image  

    Glad the plants are surviving.


    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • Emma1978Emma1978 Posts: 201

    Touch wood image

     

    It'd be just my luck to assume they're OK, and to come down in a few mornings from now to find they've all croaked.

  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,138

    We've all got our fingers crossed for you image


    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





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