I'll take a swing at this one. I repair hail damaged vehicles for a living. The method I use to remove the damage is called Paintless Dent Repair or PDR. I'll mention my qualifications just to give you an idea of my expertise. I started in the trade in 1991 and have repaired vehicles all over the US and Europe, including work at the Mercedes Benz factory in Stuttgart, the Toyota distribution facility in Athens, and numerous other new and used car dealerships. PDR is a method of removing hail damage and minor dent using steel tools to reshape the dent from the back side of the panel. It is the performed method by every insurance company in the world to repair hail damaged vehicles. Now to your situation. Hail dents DO NOT pop out by the sun. It is mostly an illusion from just looking at the dents for a period of time. If the heat does stretch the metal and the dents appear to "shrink" they will just "reappear" when the metal gets cold again. Hail damage is considered an 'Act of God" and therefore Ins Company's cannot raise you rates because you make a claim. There was nothing you could have done to prevent the damage. So..... call your company and see how they want you to proceed. I'm working here in Indianapolis at the moment and all the major carriers have catastrophe teams in town set up to estimate the auto hail damage. If the storm produces enough claims this is how they handle it. Your area may be different. BTW they issue you a check for the damage right on the spot minus your deductable. I hope this helps. I always recommend making an Ins. claim. That's what you pay for isn't it? If you have any other questions please ask. Michael

I'm sorry you had so much destruction but glad you made so much progress on replacement. Not just more hail seems likely, but very large to possibly GIANT hail according to the Day 2 Convection Outlook from the SPC. As of this morning's update, the big hail seems more likely at the southern end of the risk area, possibly in central and northern TX, and you know that many of us here in the Red River area often get our worst weather events coming our way from TX after they develop there and move here. Luckily for your garden and mine, (I think, and I mean 'luckily' in the oddest of ways), they've already been hit by hail several times this spring, so you'd think the law of averages might mean we won't get hit this week, but sometimes the law of averages just don't work out for gardeners. I'll be watching KXII tonight to see what Steve LaNore says about the prospect of hail. I'll also try not to work through lunch so I can make it inside for the noon news to see what Tom Miller says. I also keep an eye not only on the NWS-Norman webpage but on the NWS-Fort Worth webpage, since our worst weather at this time of year often starts SW of our county somewhere in TX and then moves NE towards us, giving us a chance to sit and watch the radar as it shows storms heading our way. I also keep an eye on WFAA's radar almost nonstop on stormy days using the one for North Texas because it shows southern OK so well. Yesterday afternoon my son was pulling up models on the Pivotal Weather website and showing me what they were showing for various parts of the day, evening and night on Tuesday. Cape Values, in particular, look horribly high for some areas tomorrow. I just dread the weather that's cominh tomorrow knowing some folks in the TX/OK/KS/NE area (and likely beyond that area) seem likely to get hit hard. Since at least the mid-1980s, it seems like North Texas runs in big hail cycles. They'll go several years without exteme hail, and then they'll have repeated cycles (sometimes for 2 or 3 years in a row) of big hail hitting over and over again, and often it keeps hitting the same communities again (this year, it seems like Wylie, Frisco and Plano are under the gun). Once in the late 1980s or maybe the very earliest 1990s, friends of ours in Arlington got hit 3 times in what I believe was three consecutive springs by baseball to softball sized hail. Every time they got the roof, windows, skylights and interior of the house repaired and replaced and finally got the landscaping fixed again and everything was finally back to normal, the giant hail struck again. Unfortunately, this seems like a year for N TX to have that sort of repeated cycles of big hail and you and I live too close to N TX to let our guard down. I've been through baseball-to-softball sized hail twice in my life, both in N TX, and it is a horrifying experience I hope never to repeat again. Sadly, even much smaller hail will destroy a garden. Baseball to softball sized hail around 1979 or 1980 just destroyed my parents' house, putting large holes not just through the entire roof and all the windows on the north side of the house, but even through the exterior siding, and interior walls and ceilings. To fix the house, much of it had to be stripped down to the studs. Damage to every living plant outdoors was almost as bad, and some trees lost so much foliage they never recovered. That is the sort of storm I dread having. While losing a large part of the veggie and flower garders is devastating in its own way, we've never had anything bigger than about half-dollar sized hail hit our house since moving here, and my garden rebounded pretty well from that. Our Fort Worth house took a huge amount of hail damage one year in the 1990s from hail that was almost tennis ball sized, but my garden tolerated the hail damage that year really well, which surprised me. That was likely in April or earliest May of that year. The garden likely survived as well as it did because of the direction from which the hail came, which meant the hail had to fall through the canopy of our next door neighbor's tall trees (which shaded the garden more than I liked, but which in this case helped), which meant it had slowed down significantly by the time it hit my garden plants....and they had the added "shelter" of many small limbs knocked down on top of my garden by the hail. And, honestly, there was so much damage to our roof, window screens, and ornamental plantings that year (oh, and to our large above-ground swimming pool and to our cars) from the hail that I had a lot more than my garden to worry about. It likely was the least of my worries as it was more quickly fixable than everything else. It is hard to get a roofer to fix your house when every single house in the neighborhood also needs a new roof at the same time. I don't even want to think about having hail this week, but I think this region is likely to see some big, big hail. Since hail is usually so hit-and-miss, I'm hoping we all escape it, but good luck only carries us so far in the spring before it runs out.

I don't know if this interests you or not, but someone told me (I think it was Chris) that you could fertilize every two weeks with a water soluble fertilizer to promote growth. Whomever it was said Bob Solberg said you could do every 10 days. I've not tried it, but it might help cover the bare spots. Glad they are looking better. That touch of class is really pretty. We've had some nasty weather with hail and tornadoes, but it has all missed me, thank God. With spring about over, maybe we're finished with bad weather for the summer. bk

Charles, I leave my reptibark sitting out in a big bin for days...no damage there. I then scoop up the dripping bark and mix it with the rest of the ingredients. Ideally, you should mix, then leave moist for a couple of days to let the lime begin to react, but I do not. As far as how long before they deteriorate, you should be fine...a few days will not hurt much. Just wait till the storm passes. Make sure you put in the lime. I am also a lover of Oscomote plus since I sometimes do not have time to feed with FP. Plus, we get lots of rain here sometimes, and I feel reassured that the rain is releasing the additional nutrients.