Well, Hail! Where's a parachute when you need one?

10 years ago

We had some bad weather Friday night while we were out of town and I heard some hints that hail was involved. When we got home, I went straight to the hostas, of course, and sure enough, there are little tears, one or two, on most of them. Spoot!!!! I can't remember the last time that we had hail and, of course, it would be the first year of the new hosta bed, when it was looking so good.

The damage is pretty minimal, no one else will even notice it, but I know it's there. None of the potted ones were affected, I had a sun screen over them. Just the in the ground ones got it. Oh, well, what can you do, right? Just roll with the punches...

That did get me to thinking, what would I have done, had I been here and knew the hail was coming. Bet you could cover a pretty big area with one of those kids play parachutes that has the handles around the edge, so you could stake it down easily. The middle hole could go around the tree like a skirt, you'd have to hold it up/attach it to the tree somehow, but it would have covered most of the new bed. Wouldn't that be a riot, driving down the road and seeing a parachute in someone's yard blowing in the wind? To keep the holes from my hostas, "I'd a done it, too!"

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Comments (9)

bkay2000
9 years ago
funn, the best thing i've found is window screen. I found that sheet usually get really heavy when they get wet (rain accompanies hail here usually) and leave other problems. Just unroll the screen over the hosta and it will pretty well protect them. Roll it back up when it's over and put it in the gardening shed.

bk

My first bad hail storm
josephines167 z5 ON Canada
9 years ago
Bk - what a GREAT idea! Chalk up another one for you. :-)

Funnthsun , I'm with you! And Hilarious imagery, the parachute! Lol
But it sure would have worked in a pinch!
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bkay2000
9 years ago
Ken has a photo that is worse than mine. When I was whining about this, he posted it. There was nothing left but petioles.

bk
User
9 years ago
Taking the clue from all your experience, I went out at first light (I've been up since 4am) and began moving my hosta beneath trees and shrubs which could give some form of protection. Also up against the fences which have vines growing on them. It won't keep all the damage away, but the rare and beautiful I do hope survive any onslaught which we might receive. It is not hot, but the humidity is very high, there seems to be a slight sprinkling of rain now that I've come inside. Our worst of this is predicted to occur from 4pm to tomorrow morning some time, with predictions of hail as large as baseballs. My DH freaks out when the word "tornado" is mentioned, and I guess that is part of the weather pattern.

At least this time it isn't happening when they have a sailboat race down the Bay to Dauphin Island and boats get dismasted and such as that. Or the Fairhope Arts And Crafts Festival weekend when everybody runs for cover from the hail. I cannot wait for April to sigh and step aside, and along comes pretty little May.....

....but May is full of primises. She can't keep em fast enough for some. But along comes June .....and then....for everyone, I hope it will be a time when

JUNE IS BUSTIN OUT ALL OVER....

Isn't that a great song?

Here is a link that might be useful: June is bustin out
funnthsun z7A - Southern VA
Original Author
9 years ago
Bkay, I appreciated your suggestion. We are expecting more hail today, so I went out and bought a couple of super long rolls of screen to cover what's in the ground and adjusted what's in pots to be sure that they are adequately covered by the sun screens. Thanks for the suggestion!

Also, this is a post hijack, but I'm pretty sure I can't hijack my own post, sooooo.....

What did you do with the hostas in pots that didn't make it last year? Did you toss them already? The reason that I was asking is that I decided to set mine out on a table in the sun and just let them stay there in hopes that they might still resurrect themselves. I am still actually getting an occassional one to green up. When it does, I move it over to the regular pot area. I got two to green up in the last day or two. Was really surprised b/c it's been a couple of weeks since I had one to do that, so I really thought the remainder were toast. I've gone from 35 losses to about 24 that way. I'm still hoping others will pull through, in the end. They just get rain and nothing else. We shall see.
bkay2000
9 years ago
I tossed mine. Bridegroom was the last to come back from dormant eyes. It is so small that it will take years to make a nice plant, though. I already bought another one. I'm still waffling about how to handle all the ones that came back smaller than last year. I know they need to be moved to smaller pots - and soon. I'm just not sure how small to go with them.

bk
Errant_gw
9 years ago
What do you do with the hail damaged hostas? Do you just leave them as is, or trim back the damaged areas?

Excuse my ignorance, I'm a total newb. I planted 8 last year, but a gopher got to six of them. The remaining two were just snowed on, so I'm worried about them.

This post was edited by Errant on Wed, Apr 30, 14 at 17:56
bkay2000
9 years ago
You can remove the damaged leaves to make the plant look better. Or, you can leave them to continue their work. If you remove the leaves, the plant will use it's reserves to releaf this year.

I have always chosen to leave the ugly leaves, as most of us believe that any piece of leaf contributes to the growth and beauty of the plant in the next year.

It's just a choice.

bk
Errant_gw
9 years ago
Thank you, bk! That's exactly what I was thinking, but I wanted to be sure.