HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo. — This spring’s storms have been a point of frustration for many home gardeners who planted flowers or vegetables time and again just to have all their hard work destroyed.
Marie Kress is one of those gardeners. Kress and her boyfriend decided to try their hand for the first time this year by building five raised garden beds. The couple then planted everything from okra to artichokes to cucumbers.
They used PVC pipes to hang netting above the beds in an effort to protect their plants and the construction was able to withstand a few hail storms this year.
“We had actually quite good luck for the first few storms of the season until yesterday,” Kress said.
A large hailstorm accompanied by a nearby tornado brought strong winds to her neighborhood that tore through her garden.
“At some point, I couldn't really do much more other than watch the wind pick up all the netting that we had in place,” Kress said.
After the storm, she surveyed the damage and then took to a Facebook gardening group to ask what she should do next. On that same page, other gardeners shared their own stories and pictures of all the damage caused by recent storms.
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“I think everyone in the group and including myself is very devastated. But it's an experiment and nature is there to work with it, not work for you,” Kress said.
She’s considering replanting some of her garden again but this late in the year, is all the effort worth the hassle?
“There's going to be more hail probably. But it's still early enough in the season where you could plant and the plants can recuperate later on,” said Karim Gharbi, an extension agent with Denver County.
However, if you’re on a budget, he said he may hold off on planting again until the fall and stick to a few perennials and annuals this summer.
Because hail storms are so common in Colorado, Gharbi first recommends putting up netting to protect your plants and prevent the damage before it occurs.
“I know this is kind of cost prohibitive for a lot of people, it's not an option for all their plants. So you may have to kind of pick which plants you want to prioritize,” he said.
Another tip: Select plants that are native to Colorado since they are already well adapted to the climate and tend to withstand the storms better.
If the damage to your flowers and vegetable gardens has already occurred, Gharbi said the first thing to do is tread lightly when you are walking through your garden. The moisture from the storm is already compacting the soil and you don’t want to compact things further but walking around it.
“I would lightly cultivate the soil afterwards to kind of help increase the porosity, reintroduce some of those pore spaces back into the soil and do this kind of damage assessment see how bad the plants are,” he said.
After that, remove any dead or damaged foliage from the garden because it can be a breeding ground for pests and pathogens.
If you are growing a root vegetable and the leaves are damaged, he said the plant likely will not survive because the leaves are needed to make more sugars so the vegetable will not be able to recover.
Other plants that are harvested just for their leaves like kale, however, will likely be able to bounce back after the storm so Gharbi suggests pruning off the dead greens and bent stems and then letting them recover.
As for trees, if roots are exposed and you can cover them up easily, he suggests doing that. If the tree’s limbs are damaged severely enough, he suggests cutting them off.
If the tree trunk itself is damaged, he suggests a Band-Aid of sorts.
“You can apply like, maybe a tree wrap or something if you have just like, duct tape on hand; something that covers up that wound because just like humans, when we get a cut, trees also get infected and those wounds can serve as an entry point for pests and pathogens, particularly Cyclospora canker disease,” he said.
A fungicide can also be used but he suggests following the directions exactly on the bottles since they can harm pollinators.
In the end, Gharbi said the trees are resilient so they will bounce back.
And, for all those amateur gardeners out there, don’t lose hope, there’s still plenty of time to grow a thriving garden.
