I hope this question isn't as stupid as it sounds in my head, but how do you guys protect your plants from hail and heavy rain? That last rain killed two of my bean plants (beat them to death--it was very heavy rain) and all but one of my 7 giant sunflowers (only a month old). Is it as simple as covering everything up?

Thanks,
Taira

Taira,

There are no stupid questions.

I would say it depends on the size of your garden.

My garden is large and I couldn't cover up all of it if I tried, so I just don't try. Sometimes I lose plants to heavy rain, wind, hail, etc. and that's just something you have to accept in gardening.

If you have a small to medium sized garden and want to try to protect plants from inclement weather, you can cover them up if you want, but be sure your coverings are weighed down so the wind can blow them off the plants and kill more plants in the process. For example, if you put buckets, boxes or flower pots over the plants to protect them from hail, you need to put a brick or large rock or something on top of each bucket, pot, or box so the wind can't blow it off the plant, crushing other plants in the process.

Early in the spring when my tomato plants and other plants are small and inclement weather threatens, I cover them up with floating row cover, but that is to protect them from freezing temperatures, sleet, snow or frost, not to protect them from rain or hail.

I always plant my beans plants too close to one another, and then when a few get snapped off by wind or whatever, I have plenty left.

With tomato plants, peppers and sunflowers I stake them to 2' tall grade stakes with zip ties as soon as they are in the ground and tall enough to be staked (about 6" tall except, of course, for plants that are taller than that when transplanted....I stake them the day they are planted). I stake them a little loosely because if you stake them too tightly they'll snap in high wind, so you want them staked enough to hold them upright but not so tightly that a strong wind snaps them in half just above the zip tie or yard or whatever is used to attach the plants to the stake. The plants have to be able to move a little. I remove the zip ties from the tomato plants and sunflowers before their stalks are so large that the ties are cutting into the stalks or restricting their growth. I leave the peppers staked the whole season, but since I didn't pull the zip ties too tightly to begin with, their main stems can enlarge without being constricted.

Once, I finished a long day of transplanting tomato plants only to see big, black clouds rushing our way from the southwest. Fearing hail, DH and I grabbed our 5 white folding tables and lined them up right over the just-planted double row of tomato plants to protect them. For tomatoes in another bed, we used chairs. It hailed. The plants were saved. We were relieved. However, that was just a bit of luck. Usually, you can't do much.

If you have plants that are caged, you might have luck running some sort of protective covering, like a tarp, over the top of the cages and attaching it to the cages with clothespins. I've done that for frost protection before, but never tried it to keep hail and rain off the plants.

Dawn

That makes sense. Our garden is very small...depending on the severity of the cells headed our way, I may cover a few things.