Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Hail storms twice this week (so far)

This is what our garden looked like on Sunday afternoon after a hail/rain storm. This is taken through the family room window. (Some tomato fences are leaning against the house by this window.) On the left front, under the milk jug is our cherry tomato plant. Beside it are zucchini hills and closer to the bottom of the picture is the lettuce row. Everything else you see is green beans. Some of the green beans had holey leaves, but the damage wasn't too bad.

On Tuesday afternoon, we had a repeat hail storm. Some of the hail was slightly bigger than the pea size we had on Sunday, but with the accumulated hits, the beans really were damaged. Some of the leaves are completely beaten off, some still holey. I'm afraid we are going to have to replant.

Here are the regular tomato plants, covered with the milk jugs. Where the growth was outside of the protection, the stems are stripped of leaves now. We are thankful we still had the jugs on. A couple of them tipped over.

Tuesdays' hail piled up against the house on the deck. It came from the south. Sunday's hail did not land on the north side of the deck at all because of the overhang and the direction of the storm.

It seems to me that it is pretty rare for us to get hit twice in 3 days with hail storms. We are hoping and praying that is the last of it. In another part of Johnstown, the hail was quarter size, so we could have been worse off...