Devastating Gardening Report
I don't even know where to begin, so I'm going to just start with the facts.
Yesterday I put together a post with a bunch of photos I took on Saturday, to show you the garden. This is an amazing community and I got a lot of nice comments I'm going to reply to after I publish this post.
So as I said earlier, I took the photos Saturday in the morning and before noon, then we had a lot of work to do, we've been busy all day and in the evening, around 8 pm or so, we haven't even finished the work we had and all of a sudden all hell broke lose. Literally, all hell broke lose. It started hailing, we got ice falling from above for 20 minutes.
At first there were small pieces, maybe like a small cherry and we said it's a problem as who needs hailing in July, but it's not the end of the world, maybe it's not going to do much damage.
Then things changed in a split second and the hailing got stronger. Bigger pieces of ice started falling, hitting the roof like bullets. I wanted to go out to pick up the biggest piece to be able to take a photo, but honestly I was afraid for my safety. The one I'm holding on the photo is about the size of a walnut and it wasn't even the biggest. This is what I could pick up from the terrace, without putting my glasses and head in danger. After twenty minutes the hailing stopped, after that there was another 10 minutes of raining. After that we put our robber boots on and went out to see the damage, but I took the photos only in the morning. So let's see what mother nature did with the garden.
Tomatoes
The most shocking of all was this scene. Half of the tomato is missing!
Look at those bruises! Once any vegetable of fruit is bruised, safety is over, any disease can appear and your crop is gone.
Looks at these, all bruised. All of them, without exception.
These tomatoes are like bushes, but after the hailing were all on the ground.
A lot of the small tomatoes were on the ground as were not strong enough to resist the hitting.
Hot Pepper
Look at this one. Half of the pepper is missing and the other half is badly bruised, not that it serves for something as it's already dead.
This one was also cracked open, so it's as good as dead.
Squash
Squash leaves are very fragile as are not like any other leaves. You barely touch them and they break easily. Look at the one on the photo, broken! And look at the laves, full of holes!
Broken!
Broken!
Broken!
Look at those leaves, look like lace, but it's not lace, the holes are from the hailing.
Green Beans
The green beans were all on the ground, without exception!
Running Beans
Running beans got hit as well as the leaves are half missing, but because these are growing vertical, suffered less. Thank God!
Cauliflower
Because these have big and very sensitive leaves, got hit pretty badly. These leaves are full of holes. Good thing the cauliflowers are fully covered at this stage, so they were protected.
White Squash
As if the damage wasn't enough, snails were already having a party, eating up what was left of the leaves. These appear after the rain and destroy everything.
Honeydew
Poor thing, this was hit pretty badly. The whole plant is full of holes, the honeydew got bruised badly and the future of it is uncertain.
Kohlrabi
Full of holes!
Melon
This is the melon in case you're wondering, or better it was a few days ago.
This is me in dirty robber boots, doing risk assessment.
Cucumber
This is the second batch of cucumbers, that were still small. These got hit pretty badly. I'm not sure if they can recover. I guess we'll know in a week or two. The others are already on the net and because those are growing vertical, have not suffered so much damage. The leaves got holes but nothing serious.
Look at it, a big mess.
This is the cucumber on the net. The leaves are full of holes, but they will recover.
Cucumber leaf, half missing.
The neighbor never uses a net as he said why bother when they grow anyway. His cucumbers got destroyed completely, unfortunately.
Look at all those pepper leaves on the ground!
Conclusion
The hailing was on Saturday evening. It's been three days since then and it looks like the damage is not as huge as it seemed at first glance. It is a setback as those tomatoes are going to rot most likely and the peppers as well, but the plants can recover. The onion was all on the ground but it was done anyway, we have to harvest those next week.
The only one that is still uncertain is the honeydew and the melon. Those two got hit pretty hard and we still have to see what can be done, if anything. These are not the main products, so it's a shame, but better than having all the tomatoes and cucumbers destroyed.
All in all I'd say we got pretty lucky as the damage is minimal and I hope we can still have a good harvest.
I have to apologize to those who have commented on my last post, I'm going to reply tonight. These few days have been crazy, we're working from morning to evening to be able to harvest and store what it's needed.
Thanks for reading my blog and no worries, we're going to recover from this.
Wow that is some big hail, poor plants really got battered.
Yes, unfortunately. It was heartbreaking to see them so bruised and thorn but it could have been worse.
Haha this is terrible, been see this kind of loss in what you have go with a lot of stress and hard working on so sorry for the loss. mate recovery is sooner
Judging from your comment, you haven't even read my post.
So sorry that comment you have seen be for it was a mistake not for you post. Thank you for been informed me on that 🙇🙇🙇🙇
Yeah right! I'm keeping an eye on you and if I see you comment spamming, you're going to regret it.
Unbelievable
Comment spammer.
Lol people are always looking to spam..
Oh no! Hope most everything can recover. We had some high winds last night that knocked around our tomatoes a bit, but no crazy hail like that. Always at the mercy of Mother Nature. Though sometimes those plants are more resilient than we think! Maybe you can at least harvest and pickle some of the green tomatoes before they rot?
Posted using Dapplr
Yes, I agree, always at the mercy of mother nature.
I agree, it's not that bad. We still need a week or two to see what is going to survive but it could have been worse.
These tomatoes are sentenced already, but the good news is these are the first one and the season ends in October, so even if these don't survive, there's the next batch. The plants are most likely still healthy. My dad says the flowers at the top are all broken down but who knows. I guess we'll wait and see.
Glad it's still early yet. Hopefully you'll still get a good harvest after all!
Sincerely sorry about your plants. Just try and pick what could be saved and try again in the next planting season.
Thank you! The season is far from over, so this is just a setback, I hope we're going to get some more soon.
Aw, sorry about the plants but I'm sure you'll recover in no time!
Lol, let us hope so! Thank you for stopping by ☺️
I'm sorry! I spend all summer hoping that this doesn't happen. Small hail is annoying but the big stuff just finishes us off
Thanks, the good thing is that it doesn't happen often.
That is crazy! Heavy hailstone in July!! What is this world coming to!! So sorry to see all your effort gone, hopefully some of the plants will survive and pull through.
Thank you my friend, unfortunately it happens from time to time and this year was our turn to get it. I'd say we're still lucky as could have been worse.
This is so sad. To see all the hard work and all these beautiful fruits devastated and ruined. I feel with you. Stay strong. Nature is strong too.
@tipu curate
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 7/87) Liquid rewards.
That is so true. Good thing our living does not rely on the crop. It helps a lot to have healthy vegetables and fruits, but it hurts more if you're counting on selling the crop.
Then it hurts in your soul and in your pocket, true.
I wish you hail-less summer from now onward :)
Wow! That's quite the hail storm, and midsummer too. We've had similar on the east coast of Australia this last summer. I hope most of the plants can make a recovery and that you don't get another.
Your post has been featured in the Lotus Garden newsletter, which will be published tomorrow. Beneficiaries go to all features.
You've been curated by @minismallholding for Natural Medicine's homesteading newsletter, supporting gardeners, permaculturalists, foragers, environmentalists and other earth centred relationships with the earth.
CommunityIIDiscord
I'm sorry to hear you also got hit by hail storm, I hope you could still get a decent crop. Thank you for featuring my post, I really appreciate it!
Sorry for your crop losses. My thoughts are the hailstorm might be caused by some sort of bio-engineering chem-trails or suchlike!
Thank you! I'm not sure what's causing it, have never been so keen to find out, but it's an ugly thing for sure, not natural.
Man some rotten luck with the garden here! It’s very challenging with things like hail just come out of nowhere in the middle of summer. It’s insane lol. Hopefully the plants will be able to recover, thankfully we still have about a month and a half to keep things growing before the temps and light start to fade more so you should hopefully be able to recover some of the stuff. The melons though are tricky! Hoping that they recover and keep on growing!
Indeed, we're lucky as it could have been worse and as you said, we still have a month and a half till the end of the season. I'm going to post another report, maybe tody, to show you the consequences.
Melons ... we'll see, only time will tell.
That's heartbreaking! We've had multiple threats of hail here, but luckily it's gone around us each time, mostly to the north or east. I hope some of your plants recover....
Sometimes we get lucky and the hailing happens a few km from us, but this time we got hit. Time will tell but it looks like we're still fine, the majority of the plants are ok, we're going to get crops later.
So sorry for what happened to the garden, you don't have to blame yourself I guess you have to provide safety measures to protect the garden to avoid the ice attack on them again.
Blame myself? Are you kidding me? Why on earth would I blame myself? Who am I? God? To be able to stop a hail storm?
I don't know what world you're living in but what you say makes exactly zero sense. I bet you haven't done gardening in your life.