Good morning, it always seems that when the chance for rain, especially this time of year, is high it usually is pie in the sky. Although the last time we had high percentages and we got some, but a lot of other folks didn’t. This seems to be true even during decent rain events, we may or may not get a lot and places less than a mile away may be growing gills or just knocked down the dust. There has been many a time where town is being hammered and the closer we get to the house there is nothing. Thunder clouds are very interesting.
As always in these events during the spring, my guard is always up due to the ever-present chance of hard water. Not many weather events in West Texas make me cringe, but hail makes me feel so vulnerable.
I make a point of covering everything. This time of year, the okra still short, is not beyond covering.
Hail size doesn’t matter, it is all about volume and duration. With covering, my fingers are crossed for low volume and short duration. The fabric doesn’t stop all the hail, but it is my hope that it slows the decent and the plants are bruised as opposed to eviscerated.
As I was watching the path of Mondays storm I paid very close attention as to the direction it was coming from. It was coming from the SW. This is the direction when there is hail, if we get rain it WILL have hail too.
It was a few years back and there was a storm raging from the SW. Because I could see its approach I was able to cover all the garden. This storm was accompanied with some very strong wind. It felt like the storm was riding the surface of the ground. I felt I had enough rocks on all the fabric, but it became apparent that I was lacking with my summer squash bed. The wind was strong enough to lift the fabric and nearly through it out of the garden with several rocks tangled in the fabric. My squash bed had two rows of squash that ran east and west. After the wind the hail was not far behind. Due to the angle of the wind, the south row of squash was decimated. Fortunately, the detritus covered the northern row and was minimally harmed from the hail.
There have been other storms from the SW, but this was the worst. For some reason, knock on wood, storms from the NW tend to, regarding hail, miss us and only give us rain. Many of a NW storm has left the town in a pile of confetti, broken windows and damaged roofs.
We are half way through May, it looks like there is another month and a half of hail season. The rain is good, but I feel so helpless in the middle of a hail storm. My fingers are crossed that the Alpine area misses the devastating hail of the recent past. Ah yes, this too will pass.
I keep expecting to see cucumbers begin to ripen, but to no avail. Although with the high heat of last week, I am glad that there was none to harvest. Heat will make them bitter, but this is easy to remedy when preparing them to eat. I will hold off on these details until there is another bittering spell. I expect okra by the first of June. The eggplants should be blooming within the week. Jalapenos, chilies and poblanos have set. The garlic harvest has started and finally getting tomatoes to set. My little test plot of parsnips appears to be doing fine. It was nice to see more than 75% emergence. Now it will be interesting to see how big these puppies get before harvesting next December/January. My strawberry bed seems to be happy. It is with hopes that they put out runners so that I can expand the bed. Maybe I might have enough for sale in the future.
All is doing well as long as the hard water stays away.
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