Yes, I would definitely love that information. This is my first garden this year so I've never had the experience of having full grown plants get torn up by hail. Golf ball size hail is headed toward my house at this very moment. My pepper plants and squash are still small enough that my husband and I stuck some large pots over most of them. (I knew there was a reason not to get rid of all those!) But my tomatoes are easily 4 feet tall and I don't have any tarps or anything, otherwise I would be covering those too. My first garden is doing so well, I'm just hoping and praying for the best! Good luck to the rest of you!

The only large pots I have are plastic and not able to withstand the high winds and hail, I'm afraid. I moved what I could to protected areas, and will now pray that any damage I get can be dealt with.

Good luck to everyone else as well!

Susan

The worst of the storm just missed us to the north, so my garden will live to see another day! Other than a few containers for small plants I don't really have anything on hand to cover everything with, so the garden has to fend for itself. I've seen encouraging things from gardens that have recovered from severe storm damage, though, like Chandra's last year.

Yay Miraje! That's always a relief! We've had several near misses so far this season. Susan, hope yours comes out okay. Let us know! So far we just got about two minutes of rain and lots of thunder. We live in south Moore so we're just getting the bottom of the storm. Praying for those in north OKC. Tornado warning just issued.

Shouldn't y'all be in tornado shelters right now?

The first thing to do after the storm is to not panic. Many plants will recover, so don't start yanking them out.

Pick up all the plant foliage and fruit, etc., on the ground and put it on your compost pile. Prune off anything hanging from the plant that is so detached it cannot survive. Remove any tomatoes, peppers, etc. with broken skin because rot will set in. It is a good idea to spray all the damaged plants with a fungicide. Daconil is fine for those who are willing to use synthetic formulations. Serenade is an organic fungicide, as is GreenCure. Use whatever you have or can find. Spray the damaged plants in the hope that the fungicide will prevent fungal diseases from getting into/onto the plants through damaged areas. Spraying with a fungicide won't hurt and could help. It wouldn't hurt to have sulfur or copper or neem handy in case bacterial or fungal issues do pop up on damaged plants.

If the plants were not well-watered by the storm that brought the hail, water them but don't overwater them.

If peppers and tomato plants have fruit that is really exposed to the elements because so much plant foliage has been lost, rig a simple shade canopy over them to protect them from sunscald until the foliage can regrow enough to protect them. You can use a sheet, even pieces of newspaper clipped to the tomato cages with clothespins.

Try to resist the urge to give the plant fertilizer to make them regrow faster. They are already stressed and feeding them actually stresses them, so wait a few days, and when you do feed them, give them a gentle organic fertilizer like Fish Emulsion, Compost Tea, Alfalfa Tea or Liquid Seaweed that will aid in the recovery but that won't push the plant to grow too much too quickly.

Remember to mulch the ground well to reduce soil splash since the plants will be more vulnerable to all kinds of diseases--bacterial, fungal and viral. Remember that insects often are attracted to stressed plants, so keep a close eye on pests.

Most of all, just be patient and give them a chance to recover.

I hope everyone's garden escapes hail damage, and hope the tornado warning sent everyone in the affected areas scurrying to safety. I can't think of a tornado warning now without remembering how Becky (who posts here as Gardeningwannabe or something close to that) and her family lost their house and garden to a tornado about this time last year, but didn't lose their lives.

Dawn

Unfortunately it looks like I spoke too soon. Another storm came down from the north with 30-40 mph winds and dime to half dollar size hail that covered the ground. Poor garden. :(

Heather,

I was watching the radar the last couple of hours and thinking another round might hit y'all. Sorry to hear about the hail.

Nickle to dime size hail hit our garden several times last year and did only very minimal damage. I am concerned that half-dollar size hail may have done substantial damage, depending on how hard it was falling and how long it lasted.

Tomorrow at daybreak, I think a lot of gardener's hearts will be broken when they look at their yards and gardens. Luckily, plants are very resilient.

And there's still tomorrow's weather to get through as well.

I hope your plants didn't take too much of a beating and are able to bounce back quickly.

Dawn

There were reports and pictures of baseball to softball size hail in parts of OKC, so I'm definitely not the only one that got hit. The wind was pretty fierce with the hail in a lot of places, too. Unfortunately it sounds like we may get a round two tomorrow. I guess I'm happy that we went this long without a significant hail storm. It was bound to happen.

So sorry to hear about the damage. Looks like our brand new grill took more damage than my garden. (for round 1, that is - round 2 and 3 are on their way). We didn't get hail but the wind was awful. The grill blew over into the yard and bent it up a little bit. :( I do have a question about something I can either do now or do differently next year. I opted for staking my tomatoes instead of caging because I had talked to a lot of people who thought cages were too much trouble. Now I'm thinking they could use the extra support. The branches coming off of them are heavy but I can't pull them up enough to strap them to the stakes along with the main stem. What to do? Should I do multiple stakes for one plant? I want to make sure it's supported. In tonights wind I might have lost one of the larger branches. It's laying over but I can't tell if it's actually broken. Will know more tomorrow in the daylight. Any suggestions would be great. Also, I don't really know how to prune them or how much to prune. They're getting pretty crazy at this point. I'll post pictures tomorrow if ya'll want.

I am fine. The sound of the hail was horrendous. I am pretty sure it was baseball sized , but I was hiding in my not-very -safe closet. By the time it was safe enough to take pics they had melted. I will look tomorrow, but I am sure there is lots of flower damage in my yard. Definitely a lot of tree leaves down.

I am afraid I will need another roof, darn it.

I'm a few blocks over from Lisa...and watched the same very large hail bouncing through my yard, slung by 60mph winds. My garden is...interesting. I went out with my flashlight to see many of the plants parallel to and on the ground, but I don't think they were snapped. I'll try to right them tomorrow and see how many dozen tomatoes I've lost :~( The air around the gardens is redolent of onions...which I was going to dig today! I'm guessing that I need to go ahead and get them out and somewhere safe to try to dry??

One of my heavy-duty shepherd's hooks is bent at the ground...with the hanging baskets still intact and touching the ground. 1 1/2" of rain fell.

Crazy Oklahoma...sigh.

Sharon

We got hail, rain and wind twice. The second time was really awful! My security light was broken by the hail, so I cannot really check for damage yet. Hopefully a few plants survived.

In core OKC, we got 6" of rain so far. Lots of flooding, flash flood warnings. As the the Northern edge of the storm moved thru, new storms kept and keep developing, but looks like it might be finally moving on shortly. We had hail off and on all night. Early hail was golf ball to tennis ball size.

We lost electricity about 8 pm - just guessing. It was definitely loud all night without any "house noise" going on. I kept waking up to the sound of hail and the booming thunder.

As I came home at 11 p.m. from the neighbors, who kind of all gather together at one house across the street here, I noticed lots of tomatos on the ground. A lot of the Juliet's which are probably tougher and heavier than the hail, lol! Didn't get a chance to observe much else.

My electricity finally came back on about 6 a.m. Lots of areas were w/o power in central OKC.

Will check back in after looking over the garden.

Susan

First I feel for each of you. Who suffered damage and loss. Whether to your garden, house, vehicle or property.I've experienced several hail storms through the years. Only twice have I experienced damage that the tomatoes and most of the garden didn't recover well from. So like Dawn said don't panic or over react. Many times it will be 5-10 days before you will really see the recovery take place. The only immediate actions I usually take are rooting large stems ect that were broke off that I might want to use as transplants if needed. If it doesn't storm here tonight I will replace a pepper plant broke off from the hail Sat. night. The few beans ect that were lost I won't worry about. I usually have a light mulch layer over my onions so unless the hail is heavy I usually don't see damage to bulbs. The wind during the storm Sat night did about as much damage as the hail.

Susan, you had SIX inches of rain??? OH my goodness. My rain gauge showed 2.5 this morning. I was pleased with that, though, I needed it.

I have some damage. My hydrangeas took a pretty good beating, but the Endless Summer one should recover just fine from that. I saw other damage, but nothing devastating.

My house appears to be fine. No leaks, but I am sure a roofer will have to check out the roof. My neighbors both lost windows and one lost a huge pecan limb. As I walked around the neighborhood this morning, I fully expected to see dead cars, but I really did not see any blown out windshields or other damage other than tree leaf litter everywhere.

They are telling us there will be more severe weather today.

Lisa

Heather, We always have a big hail storm just when my garden is looking as beautiful as it ever has. Seems like Mother Nature likes to remind us who's the boss. When other people are looking at the garden and saying "It is so beautiful...." I am cringing inside just knowing they're jinxing my garden and now it is going to be destroyed by hail. So far, so good here, knock on wood.

JenTiffany, Without seeing your plants it is hard to guess what would be the most effective means of supporting them at this point. Additional stakes would be better than nothing. Cages would have been much better and I am a very vocal advocate of cages. I've used them since the 1980s and my dad used them in the 1960s and 1970s when I was growing up. Nothing else I've ever seen will hold up to severe thunderstorms and derecho winds like sturdy, well-staked cages will. By cages, I mean home-made cages made from concrete reinforcing wire or sturdy woven wire fencing. The little cages sold in stores cannot support the size and weight of indeterminate tomato varieties in our climate. It normally takes winds in excess of 60-65 mph to make my caged plants even tilt, and only very rarely will a stake come out of the ground or break (if it is a wooden stake and not a metal one) during a storm and allow a caged plant to blow down onto the ground. I usually stake each cage with two stakes, using either metal T-posts or wooden grade stakes, but the largest and heaviest plants have 4 or 5 stakes by the end of the summer if it has been a windy, stormy year. It probably doesn't happen but maybe once every 3 or 4 years that I find caged plants on the ground, and it usually is only a random plant here or there...not a lot of them.

You might google and check out the Florida Weave method of tomato support. I don't use it but some folks on this forum do. I am not sure what kinds of winds that the Florida Weave-supported plants will withstand, but think it likely they'd hold up pretty well as long as the stakes/poles used are sturdy and the string/twine is too. It would be very hard at this stage to put a cage around large tomato plants, so the Florida Weave is probably your best option for this season.

I only prune off damaged or diseased foliage. Be careful not to prune too much foliage off the plants or the sun will sunburn your exposed tomatoes and ruin them before they ripen.

All of you in central OK, I was watching that radar and cringing on your behalf as the storms hit your neighborhoods. I hope the damage is as minimal as possible considering how wicked the weather was.

We didn't even have a Severe Thunderstorm Watch for our county until sometime after 10:30 pm even though counties on three sides of us had them at the same time the rest of y'all were put under the intial Severe Thunderstorm Watch. Once the NWS finally put us under the watch, we soon had a warning and storms all night long, which are continuing even now. I think the worst of it was between about 12:30 a.m. and 2:00 a.m. although I wasn't really watching the clock. I had my phone in one hand with radar on it and the fire radio in the other as I listened to emergency calls and weather reports. We had lots of wind and lightning and some hard rain, with hail in our county but not at our house. We had 1.5" of rain in our rain gauge this morning when I checked it and more light rain has fallen since then.

Sharon, I hope your tomatoes and onions are salvageable. I harvested all my onions two days ago so the hail in these storms wouldn't get them. I had too many tomatoes not yet breaking color to harvest, but did harvest about 100-125 big ones over two days, and several hundred bite-sized ones. Today I'm going to be dehydrating and canning tomatoes. If there is a lull in the storm that is lightning-free, I'll go out and pick anything else that has broken color overnight as well as all the squash and zucchini currently on the plants.

If your onions were sticking way up out of the ground (mine had popped up so much as they bulbed that about 75% of their bulb area was out of the ground when I harvested them), they likely will have bruising or even cuts/indentations/depressions in their flesh from the hail. If they do, I'd harvest them, cure them, etc. If you see visible water oozing from them, those have deep damage and it likely would be better to chop or slice them and freeze them because they probably will not store well.

Susan, Sorry to hear about all that hail. (sigh) It is one of the most frustrating challenges we gardeners face here because there's little you can do in a short period of time to protect plants from large hail.

I teasingly ask Tim to build a giant Bio-Sphere over my garden every year to protect it from hail, and he seriously replies "No Way" every time. Other than that, he is very supportive of my gardening habit.

Today's weather looks to be possibly worse than yesterday's for some areas of our state. That worries me. I'll probably move as many of my containerized plants as I can into the garage and potting shed, along with lawn furniture, hummingbird feeders, decorative items, etc.

Jay, If I can figure out a way to do it, I'm going to put something up over my biggest bed of pepper plants to protect it from today's severe weather, if we get a break from this morning's lightning and rain. Dr. Forbes has given western and southern OK a '6' on his Tor Con Index and that worries me. My big bed of peppers are sited for afternoon shade from a nearby pecan tree. Unfortunately that means they are in the area most likely to have a tree fall on them. Sometimes you can't win for losing.

I assume y'all have a chance for severe weather up there in Kansas today as well?

I fear it is going to be a long, long day for many people in our region today, and maybe another long night as well.

Dawn

I just finished a bit of garden triage. It looks like the wind might have hit the squash and cukes the hardest. The vines and leaves are broken in spots, shredded in spots, and all were blown over to one side. The not-quite-ripe squash had dings and bruises all over them. Several green tomatoes were also damaged by the hail, and one tomato plant was blown completely over, cage and all. It doesn't look like the stem snapped anywhere, though, so I just eased it back up and re-anchored the cage. The tomato plants look a *little* more naked than they did before and the ground behind them is covered in leaves, but I honestly expected worse. Assuming today doesn't nail them again I think they'll be okay. A few of the onions were blown over, so I just picked those and plan to chop and freeze them.

Overall, I think things will be okay. It'll be interesting to see how the squash and cukes recover with as bad as they look right now, but at least I have time to replant them if I need to. Now I just have to hope that round 2 today is merciful!

All of you who had serious hail damage or flooding or wind damage to your gardens, homes, or vehicles ... I am so sorry! I hope recovery will be quick and that you aren't hit again by today's expected storms. My DH is an insurance agent and he dreaded going in this morning. His office was affected too because it's a mile from where the power poles went down in Edmond, and the people who got there before him said the parking lot looked like a war zone because of the tree limbs. Fortunately at home we had only small hail, probably marble sized at most, for about 5 to 10 minutes, wind and a LOT of rain .... 2 1/2 inches in under an hour. I didn't have time to inspect the garden this morning but it looked like at least everything is still upright from what I could see from the house, and I don't think hail that size would have done much damage if any.

Everyone stay alert and aware today since it sounds like there is more to come!!

Suzie

4 1/8th inch of rain, and plenty of hail. So far, the only real damage I found is a busted window on the south side. I was able to patch it up last night during a dry spell.

round one hail size
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round two hail size
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Just under 2" in the gauge this morning but it was still raining a bit when I left. This is some of our hail after about 10 minutes.

And some of the pool water going crazy. Hard to see in the still photo. Wished I had a video camera.

I toured the garden this morning. Quite a lot of damage, but nothing that can't recover after pruning. I decided not to prune today since we have another round coming this evening, and I'd have to do it again. Even some of those broken branches and damaged fruits might offer some sort of protection from even more damage.

So, I packed up my stuff and went to spend the day with the GDs. We had such fun playing in the puddles and water. I prefer to laugh and not cry about spilt milk. Kenna didn't even cry when she saw her pumpkin patch was virtually shredded. There is one little pumpkin hanging on for dear life. We may just plant seeds again and see what happens.

I hope no one suffered completely demolished plants, and are able to at least salvage the ones they have. Plants are replaceable; people aren't.

Susan

Cages blown over. Rigged up some twine to the fence posts to make them more upright tonight. Left most foliage and fruit on the plants in preparation of tonight's storm. Can I do anything with the dozens of green tomatoes that are on the ground?

Mia, fried green tomatoes!!! :)

Moni... where the next round just started with lots of wind!

I foresee a weekend of working in the yard. There is more damage than I saw at first glance. I was looking at my crinums this morning and was a little sick. They got beaten down pretty good. Most people wouldn't see the damage, but you know, *I* do :)

I looked at my squashes (the ones I think of as "Seedmama" squash! :) ) and pumpkin, they got hit pretty hard too.

Lisa

Mia,

I second Moni's suggestion of fried green tomatoes. They're good, and you can put them on a BLT sandwich as the tomato part with a little cilantro mayonnaise and they're really good.

There's other uses for green tomatoes too, including green tomato cake which tastes like a spice cake.

If you like to can, you could make green piccalli which combines green tomatoes with onions, bell peppers, sugar, vinegar and spices to make a relish that can be eaten with hot dogs, red beans and rice, etc.

You can make green tomato preserves. The ingredients in green tomato preserves are green tomatoes, lime juice, lime zest, fresh grated ginger, jalapeno peppers and sugar. If you want to make some and need the recipe, let me know and I'll post it.

If you'll look at the attached link, there's a list of green tomato recipes at the left side of it.

Lisa, Luckily crinums are really resilient and should bounce back well. I'm sorry your plants got hit so hard.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Green Tomato Recipes

The roofer just called....half of my roof needs to be replaced, the south and east side I am guessing :)! I might be able to sneak in some window paint too. Oh, I hope so, they desperately need it!

I had one tomato plant strangely uprooted, I think it had just twisted and twisted itself out of the ground. About 20 smallish green tomatoes. sliced and fried with garlic scapes a couple of ripe juliets and a jalapeno. Parmesean and panko bread crumbs, delicious. But I am very thankful to have missed the hail although a little rain would have been appreciated.

I am very sorry for your damage, susanlynne, I hope the brave little pumpkin makes it!

After three days of storms, righting my tomato cages three times and picking through things this weekend, all in all, our area wasn't so bad after all. The poor cucumber and squash leaves look a bit swiss cheesy, but I think they are going to survive. I had to prune a lot of the tomato plants, but the main stems were all okay.

Phew! Hopefully this week will be quiet...

Betty, I hope you get some rain soon. Ours came in the nick of time as I don't think I could have watered the garden enough to make the plants as happy as the 2.7" of rainfall over several days has made them. It should have knocked back our drought more than it seems to have done. Some people in my county who got hit by hail suffered such devastating damage to their tomato plants that they promptly went to the feed store and bought replacement plants.

Scrapbetter, I am glad it looks like everything will survive and rebound. Large hail is just a gardener's nightmare.

I would like a quiet week too, but rainfall would be nice. I am talking about nice, slow, gentle rainfall that is not accompanied by thunder, lightning, high wind, microbursts or hail. It seems like we do not get as much gentle rainfall as we used to...we just get lots of damaging thunderstorms.

Dawn

We got rain again last night. I went to bed late and slept less than an hour when the weather radio woke me with a hail warning that was south and west of me, but I remembered my car was not in the carport, so I went out and moved it, just in case the hail came our way. Then I had trouble going back to sleep. I finally went to sleep, then thunder woke me, then rain. For a month we had almost no rain, now we are getting plenty.

Looks like another one coming in tonight for southwestern Oklahoma.

Carol, I'm glad your're getting the rain. Better late than never. We have our weather radio alert set to go off if any county adjacent to us has severe weather, so just as we were falling asleep last night, it went off to tell us that Jefferson County was under a Severe Thunderstorm Watch until 4 a.m. I was so tired I fell back asleep right away, but it was thunder (no rain, just thunder) that awakened me around 6 a.m. today. I didn't look at Jefferson County on the rainfall map to see if they got any rain during the night, but they sure need it.

Dawn

I am very late to read this thread. I am really sorry for those garden hit by hails. Last year our garden hit by storms twice, some pics are linked below. But they did recover from both storms and had some produce. I just followed the advise above. Our onions were badly hit by hails, we just chapped for freezing. same with green tomatoes as well. -Chandra