{"id":160035,"date":"2024-06-11T06:15:05","date_gmt":"2024-06-11T12:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=160035"},"modified":"2024-06-11T16:01:33","modified_gmt":"2024-06-11T22:01:33","slug":"my-new-contraptions-for-saving-my-tomatoes-in-a-hailstorm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/06\/11\/my-new-contraptions-for-saving-my-tomatoes-in-a-hailstorm\/","title":{"rendered":"My New Contraptions For Saving My Tomatoes In A Hailstorm"},"content":{"rendered":"

I call them my ‘mater-savers.<\/p>\n

Fair warning #1. If you’re not a gardener, or a farmer, you may have little interest in today’s post. There isn’t a bird or a feather to be found. Well, there are a few bird feeders…<\/em><\/p>\n

Fair warning #2. I must have been bitten by the verbose bug just before I started preparing this post. It’s a long one.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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Readers may recall the vicious and devastating hailstorm that nearly wiped out my garden at about this time last year (June 3rd). I’ve been in a lot of hailstorms, many that have produced more hail than that one did, but I’d never seen nickel-sized hail come down at such incredible speeds. The amount of damage it caused was unexpected, given the amount of hail we got.<\/p>\n

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My garden was hammered. Before the hail hit this rhubarb patch was robust and beautiful. That hail tore it all to hell.\u00a0The rest of my garden didn’t look any better so I didn’t have the heart to document the garden damage with more photos.<\/p>\n

Only a few of the smaller plants, mostly seedlings, were killed outright but the damage set the rest of my garden back for weeks and eventual production of produce was significantly reduced. I eventually got tomatoes but it took much longer than usual and there were fewer of them than there should have been. They were also smaller than usual.<\/p>\n

I’ve been a serious vegetable gardener (some flowers too) for almost my entire adult life and I live in dread of hail. Living my first 18 years on a Montana wheat and barley farm put the fear of hail in me.<\/p>\n

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This is my garden as of yesterday morning (I planted a little late but everything is really busting out now in this much warmer weather). It’s 60′ long so from this perspective you can barely see all my early veggies at the west end.<\/p>\n

Because of my back problems and resulting surgeries it’s been five years since I’ve done much in my garden but plant tomatoes and cucumbers, growing lots of amaranth to fill in the spaces and cut down on weeds. But this year I’ve often felt well enough to go almost full bore.<\/p>\n

As evidence of how much work I’ve put into my garden, and how badly I don’t want to lose it all to hail, here’s a list of this year’s crops.<\/p>\n