I don't even know where to begin, so I'm going to just start with the facts.
Yesterday I put together a post with a bunch of photos I took on Saturday, to show you the garden. This is an amazing community and I got a lot of nice comments I'm going to reply to after I publish this post.
So as I said earlier, I took the photos Saturday in the morning and before noon, then we had a lot of work to do, we've been busy all day and in the evening, around 8 pm or so, we haven't even finished the work we had and all of a sudden all hell broke lose. Literally, all hell broke lose. It started hailing, we got ice falling from above for 20 minutes.
At first there were small pieces, maybe like a small cherry and we said it's a problem as who needs hailing in July, but it's not the end of the world, maybe it's not going to do much damage.
Then things changed in a split second and the hailing got stronger. Bigger pieces of ice started falling, hitting the roof like bullets. I wanted to go out to pick up the biggest piece to be able to take a photo, but honestly I was afraid for my safety. The one I'm holding on the photo is about the size of a walnut and it wasn't even the biggest. This is what I could pick up from the terrace, without putting my glasses and head in danger. After twenty minutes the hailing stopped, after that there was another 10 minutes of raining. After that we put our robber boots on and went out to see the damage, but I took the photos only in the morning. So let's see what mother nature did with the garden.
Tomatoes
The most shocking of all was this scene. Half of the tomato is missing!
Look at those bruises! Once any vegetable of fruit is bruised, safety is over, any disease can appear and your crop is gone.
Looks at these, all bruised. All of them, without exception.
These tomatoes are like bushes, but after the hailing were all on the ground.
A lot of the small tomatoes were on the ground as were not strong enough to resist the hitting.
Hot Pepper
Look at this one. Half of the pepper is missing and the other half is badly bruised, not that it serves for something as it's already dead.
This one was also cracked open, so it's as good as dead.
Squash
Squash leaves are very fragile as are not like any other leaves. You barely touch them and they break easily. Look at the one on the photo, broken! And look at the laves, full of holes!
Broken!
Broken!
Broken!
Look at those leaves, look like lace, but it's not lace, the holes are from the hailing.
Green Beans
The green beans were all on the ground, without exception!
Running Beans
Running beans got hit as well as the leaves are half missing, but because these are growing vertical, suffered less. Thank God!
Cauliflower
Because these have big and very sensitive leaves, got hit pretty badly. These leaves are full of holes. Good thing the cauliflowers are fully covered at this stage, so they were protected.
White Squash
As if the damage wasn't enough, snails were already having a party, eating up what was left of the leaves. These appear after the rain and destroy everything.
Honeydew
Poor thing, this was hit pretty badly. The whole plant is full of holes, the honeydew got bruised badly and the future of it is uncertain.
Kohlrabi
Full of holes!
Melon
This is the melon in case you're wondering, or better it was a few days ago.
This is me in dirty robber boots, doing risk assessment.
Cucumber
This is the second batch of cucumbers, that were still small. These got hit pretty badly. I'm not sure if they can recover. I guess we'll know in a week or two. The others are already on the net and because those are growing vertical, have not suffered so much damage. The leaves got holes but nothing serious.
Look at it, a big mess.
This is the cucumber on the net. The leaves are full of holes, but they will recover.
Cucumber leaf, half missing.
The neighbor never uses a net as he said why bother when they grow anyway. His cucumbers got destroyed completely, unfortunately.
Look at all those pepper leaves on the ground!
Conclusion
The hailing was on Saturday evening. It's been three days since then and it looks like the damage is not as huge as it seemed at first glance. It is a setback as those tomatoes are going to rot most likely and the peppers as well, but the plants can recover. The onion was all on the ground but it was done anyway, we have to harvest those next week.
The only one that is still uncertain is the honeydew and the melon. Those two got hit pretty hard and we still have to see what can be done, if anything. These are not the main products, so it's a shame, but better than having all the tomatoes and cucumbers destroyed.
All in all I'd say we got pretty lucky as the damage is minimal and I hope we can still have a good harvest.
I have to apologize to those who have commented on my last post, I'm going to reply tonight. These few days have been crazy, we're working from morning to evening to be able to harvest and store what it's needed.
Thanks for reading my blog and no worries, we're going to recover from this.