Good morning, well the rain spell may be ending but BOY HOWDY was last Thursday night’s storm a doozy. It had that color to it where you think “yup this is going to be a real hail event”. We have been most fortunate to have missed most of the severe hail events. Every dog has its day and Thursday night was our time. I will also say if I was not a huge fan of row covers before this storm I surely am now. With out it I would have bought the farm and would be back to ground zero.
The vast majority of the storm was horizontal. I do not have a wind gauge but the airport recorded 35 mph winds with gusts up to 55. Fortunately for at least half the garden there were enough rocks in place. Not so good for the other half. These beds were all but bush hogged into the ground.
Going into this storm I was prepared as well as I could be. The only thing I would change is maybe have new fabric on all the beds.
It was as intense of a storm as I have ever experienced. I do not think there is anything else I could have done to prepare for it. Because of the pounding horizontal wind and the driving hail. No bed went unscathed. Those beds that were uncovered by the wind were chewed up by degrees as to what time during the storm they became uncovered. The covered beds instead of chewed up vegetation were bruised by the wind and the hail. I thank my lucky stars that half the garden remained fully covered. It is truly amazing that it did.
After the storm that evening I drudgingly took a tour of the garden. It wasn’t pretty but I had to wait until after deliveries on Friday to do the cleanup. I remember when I was still working for an employer and was unable to start the cleanup until the weekend, all of that shredded vegetation was a calling card for bugs. I vowed never to do that again. This time I got everything cleaned up and at least out of the beds so that I could recover the beds. This was as much to protect against bugs but also from the intense sun that was expected to come. To not have covered would have allowed the scalding sun to sun burn the denuded and healing plants.
The only bed that I see with the most mortality was my new Card/Kale bed. I was hoping that most of the plants would do a “phoenix” thingy, but there is a point that where there can be no recovery. Luckily there are some more chard and kale transplants that can fill in the holes. The old chard bed, that I was a thinking of taking out of commission, was cleaned up and will take up some slack until the new bed heals.
This year has thrown me some real screw balls that have set me back. All of these events if it were not for my complete and total embracement of row covers, I would have been destroyed and left to start over completely from scratch. What an amazing tool and invention. In the past I have thought I could garden with out it, and that it really helps level the playing field. As the weather in far West Texas gets more flippant I am not sure that I could garden without it.
Please place your orders and I will fill them as best I can. I expect to have this event with Ut most haste become only a small image in my rear-view mirror!!
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