Soooo sorry to hear about your garden! I don't have any suggestions but hope it all turns out ok!

Just give them a few days to see how they will respond. It always amazes me the hardships plants can over come. Last year I had a woodchuck eat my squash clear to the ground. After trapping the culprit they grew back as good as new. Your beans will continue to climb if they survive. Your tomatoes will also continue to grow. So don�t give up hope.

I've seen pepper plants that were eaten down to the stem and came back to producing a bunch of peppers so like previously stated just give it time.

Standard here, much will come back.

Purchase black poly rather than PVC. I have .5, .75, and 1 inch, use the .75 and 1 in summer for hail. I secure with rebar or similar. I also go to construction sites to get my pipe for free, amazing what goes in the dumpster. I make clips to secure fabric to hoop out of same size diameter pipe, cut out ~15-20% of diameter lengthwise and file burrs.

Dan

I use 30% black woven polypropylene shade cloth as hail netting over much of my garden. The only concern is that the weight of hail can get pretty massive. If the top is sloped and tight enough the hail may bounce off but that's hard to do. The shade cloth itself is very strong and durable. I've used some 20 summers.

We average about four hails a year. None this year because we're at 0.15 inches total rain since Sept 15. Grass fires everywhere.

What a shame. You are seeing why we gardeners pay such close attention to the weather channel...

To make the protection process easier, you need to be prepared with the right materials. I keep a large trash bag full of gallon milk jugs from which I have cut the bottoms out. Yesterday, as the same storm was threatening me, I put a bottle over each plant with a stake through the spout and into the ground. If the plants had been bigger, I would have used 3 gallon plastic nursery pots that I keep stacked up in the basement. I spread floating row covers over the beds of beans, using bricks and pieces of 4x4 lumber to weight it down. Our hail was only quarter size, so this was adequate. I honestly don't know if any fabric would have been adequate against softball sized...Wow.

The point is to have this stuff stockpiled and easily accessible so that you can get it put out quickly and it doesn't feel like too much trouble. We have alot of time and money invested in our gardens, so it's worth it to think ahead. (Hope this doesn't sound too mother hennish. :)

I agree with the other posters that you should keep an eye on your plants and see what they do. They may recover from the damage. As to thinning, choose the plants that are the largest and seem to be growing fastest to keep. Use scissors or your thumb mail to cut off the others at ground level. Don't pull them, as this process may disturb the root systems of the nearby keepers.

This happened to me last year and the vegetables looked horrible. I was pleasantly amazed at how much and how quickly they recovered. I hope yours recover quickly. They really do seem to bounce back.

Bellatrix

But I think that all the advices are too little too late
for the OP. Now what should he do?
I say, never give up. That has been a human challenge for ages to fight the undesireable elements. PLANT AGAIN, CARE FOR THE DAMAGED ONES...IT IS ONLY THE BEGINING OF THE SEASON. It maybe too late to start certain things from seeds. Then with some expense you can buy seedlings and plant them. I have a friend in plano, who is also affected similarly. But he had covered few things.

I feel the same way when something happens to my garden. Then I remind myself of the old saying that a man was crying because he had no shoes till he saw the man who had no feet.
I then remember my garden is a hobby, not a living. What if I was a farmer and had all the expense spent on my crop and disaster took it, then I have no income that year. All of a sudden I don't feel so bad.

Everything looks like it's all growing back. I was just really bummed from the way it looked when it happened...

Dan, you said to not use PVC - I think I will go with black poly for the actual hoops, but is there a reason to not use PVC couplings for securing the "hoops" to the sides of the garden? I just wasn't sure if PVC was unsafe for garden use...

I think I will likely use old sheets for hail covers. I think (hope?) it'll be strong enough. My only worry would be about larger hail that might pull the hoops down...

I know this setup will work for one of my veggie beds, but what about the beans and tomato bed? The beans have a large trellis next to them, and the tomatoes have 5' tomato cages around them.

emileeg, sheets are fine, and free.

You want to have flexibility for arrangement of poly and securing to side of box will take that away. You'll see why as soon as you start playing with it. I have rebar, old stakes, bamboo, doesn't matter as long as it is stiff and goes deep.

Dan