Gardening And Hail

The Horrors of Hail And A Few Ideas To Save Your Plants!

The weather is responsible of giving us our beautiful plants. We appreciate all the sunny days the weather provides us with. But the weather can take it all back in a gruesome way. I have seen and been told countless times of the effects of hail on a garden. Lots of them are ruined, torn down and left crippled after a hail-storm. This can be extremely annoying when it's your garden and your hundreds of hours you've invested to keep your garden in top-notch shape.

Imagine if it starts to rain right now. You'll feel great, because you won't have to go out and water your plants. Mother nature will do the watering for you. Wonderful! Your thirsty plants get what they want. But then the rain starts to turn into little chunks of ice. And the joy you first had starts to turn into horror. "Oh no!" you yell. "My plants!" you scream. I have been in that exact situation a few times and when I was a blooming gardener I once saw my garden (which I had worked on an entire year, every day two hours of work), whichs comes down to about 700 hours of work) being ruined, ripped to pieces by hail in about tens minutes time.

I was shocked, An entire years work, ruined in a matter of minutes. It took me 42 000 (yes, Forty Two Thousand!) minutes to get my garden in such a beautiful shape and then mother nature decided to show me who has more power by ruining my garden in just ten minutes! I started thinking of ways to fight mother nature when she did this, so I placed pots in my garden so whenever it started to hail I'd just hurry outside and cover up my plants. But as I was expanding my garden, this wasn't something I could keep on doing. In the beginning it saved my garden a few times,but soon I had to find another way of defending my garden.

I was outnumbered severely at one time, I had a few hundred plants, not nearly enough pots and I had to defend them all against the hail. So after hours upon hours of thought I built a retractable screen, horizontally to cover my entire garden! I made the mechanism out of a strong and flexible wire mesh. When it started to rain I'd run outside, pull the scren all the way back and get back inside. The rain could just seep through, but hail couldn't. The hail though, kept lying on the screen for a day, dripping water down on my plants. The entire process cost me a few hundred dollars and loads of sweat, tears and even blood was spilled. So i wouldn't recoomend this method to everybody.

If you where struck by the horrors of hail yourself and your plants are hurt by those nasty iceballs. You're looking for a way to nurse them back on their roots. And to tell you the truth that can only be accomplished by giving them tender care for several weeks. Those weeks are vital to see whether the plant will survive or if it's going to perish. Keep the plant covered from rain and wind, because your plant won't be strong enough to endure it once it is hurt like this. raindrops or a strong breeze can really cause a lot of damage to your plants in this brittle stage.

Having an emergency plan to save your plants, especially when you live in an area that is frequently terrorised by hail, is a must have! Just sitting down and watching how the hail rips your plants to pieces can NOT be an option