Southeast Queensland is tracking 72.6mm over the next seven days, with rain probability sitting at 37% most days. That’s not a top up on already damp beds. That’s a soak, and it changes what I’d plant in my own patch this week.
Subtropical: SEQ, 72.6mm on clay that’s already full
If you’re gardening in the Brisbane, Gold Coast or Sunshine Coast band, I’d hold off on planting into open ground until at least Thursday. Wet clay compacts the second you step on it or push a trowel in, and I’ve undone a season’s worth of soil structure in one soggy afternoon doing exactly that. My tomatoes are what I’m watching hardest right now. With overnight lows near 21.9°C and that much water sitting around the root zone, I’m getting a copper fungicide on before the first blight spot shows, not after. If any fruit’s close to ripe, I’m picking it now rather than leaving it out there. A soaked tomato splitting its skin is one of the more annoying ways to lose a crop.
Tropical: Top End at 139.7mm, cucurbits under real pressure
Up in Darwin, Katherine and Palmerston, I’m looking at 139.7mm and a 63% rain probability, which is a different order of problem. My cucumbers and pumpkins would be first on my mind if I were gardening there this week. Powdery and downy mildew move fast in that kind of humidity, so I’d get a preventative spray onto healthy foliage now, rather than waiting for the first yellow leaf to show up. I wouldn’t be putting seed straight into the ground either. Seed rots in saturated soil before it gets a root down, and I’d rather wait a few days for things to drain than replant the same bed twice.
Warm temperate: Sydney’s smaller number still matters
Sydney Basin is sitting at 54.6mm with a 35% rain chance, the gentlest of the three, but I still wouldn’t wave it through. My own citrus near maturity is what I’d be checking first here. A sudden top up after drier weather is a classic trigger for split skins on mandarins and oranges close to picking. If mine were within a couple of weeks of ready, I’d have them off the tree before this rain lands, not after it.
None of this is a crisis week. It’s a drainage and timing week. I’d rather delay a planting by four days than replant it in a fortnight. A proper soak, not a sprinkle, and the only hard part is keeping the mud out of the house every time I go check the rain gauge.
