Dodging Hail in the Garden

garden hail-1Friday night brought a new sort of nemesis to the garden.  It happened quick and it ended just as fast but not without doing its fair share of damage.

Hail came hurling towards the garden with no warning (or none that we heard).  The tiny pebble sized balls of ice began accumulating in the garden and tearing through some plants as they fell to the ground.

garden hail-2

It was really a interesting thing to see and if I hadn’t been worried about my garden I would have enjoyed it.

garden hail-3

I didn’t look at a clock but my guess is it was hailing for around 3 minutes with heavy rain coming down before it.

Norah and I went to check on the garden once it subsided.

garden hail-4

The main victim from the hail storm was the lettuce.  My baby plants were beaten into the ground by the storm.  After a couple days trying to regrow I am only seeing 4 plants left.  I am not sure if I will replant more lettuce from seed.  I purchased some beet green seedlings from the end of season sale at a greenhouse and I might throw them in the row to try to salvage the bed for the season.  This would make 3 years in a row my lettuce row failed and I am thinking of moving all lettuce to containers from here on out.

I lost 3 summer squash seedlings as if the cucumber beetle problem didn’t do enough damage.  I also lost a couple of my container Serrano Peppers.  On the bright side there wasn’t enough tomato or pepper fruits growing to get damaged and the hail didn’t seem hurt anything else.

I am chalking this crazy storm up to “It could have been much worse!”

 

 

 

Jeff McIntosh

About Jeff McIntosh

Jeff's family lives in his childhood home on a 1/4 acre in town lot. Despite the small space to work with, they have challenged ourselves to produce as much of our own food as possible — and cook it! They document their journey at Blogging with Apples.