Does hail count as a pest?

[wifezilla]

It's pretty common here in Spring. Hailing right now. I had to chase the ducks in to their pen. They were looking up in the sky while being pelted

Since I am having to cage certain plants to keep the ducks from eating them, I have been thinking about adding hardware cloth on top to break up the stones. How do the rest of you deal with hail?

Now we will see what survives. It isn't that big. Lets hope it stays that way!

 

[Greenthumb18]

We dont get hail that often here, but we do at least a few times in the summer. Yeah i think putting that cloth of top is a good idea. Hail causes more damage with seedlings or anything tender or small, when we had hail here my more matured plants were ok it was just the small tender lettuce seedlings that were damaged.
Hope you can get this issue fixed.
Good Luck!!

 

[ahbee01]

We had 2 hail storm here last year, mid season, it took out most of the garden, it looked like someone pelted it with a machine gun! We were so bummed. Then the tomatoes got some kinf of fungus of wilt, and we lost those too!

 

[wifezilla]

Turned out it didn't get that bad. When I went to inspect the plants, I did notice something else though...

A squirrel had eaten 3 of my melon plants and earwigs made one of my spinach beds look like swiss cheese!!!! My flowering kale seedlings were ALSO gone!!!



I am combining further squirrel deterrent with hail protection. I have some hardware cloth scraps, an old window screen and other wire basket things. I am sure I can come up with something

 

[COgirl]

Most times I am running around the garden like a igit covering things with lawn chairs, empty pots with rocks on top, benches etc... My tomatoes and peppers are in walls o water so they are protected. Yesterday we got flooded thought my taters were going to float away, so far today light rain and no hail keeping my fingers crossed, although it is starting to thunder again.

 

[wifezilla]

I got a few replacement plants at Walmart today. I didn't want them to disappear so I had to get creative. I bought a roll of hardware cloth for the duck pen and took some of it and made either squirrel-proof hail cages or hail proof squirrel-cages.

I will post photos tomorrow.