For those who’ve been around us awhile, many of you know that often push the limits for planting times and we try to get out as early as the season supports it. A frequent critique we hear is, “Sure, but what about hail?”
The truth is, you could be as conservative with your planting times as you possibly could be…and eventually, hail is still going to get you! Here we are, 20 days past our “official” last frost. A good 40 days past “actual” last frost. And as you can see, we just had one heckuva hail storm with some good 1/4 inch pellets! We’ve seen this kind of thing happen mid-summer!
We’ve been gardening in cold climates for a long time. We’ve seen crazy early and late frosts on both sides of the season, we’ve lost serious portions of our gardens to weather, had a late “Juneuary” or few and we’ve had more plants completely destroyed by mother nature than we could possibly count. Our general philosophy is that you can reasonably read the weather. But, you can’t predict the future.
If you want to know what drives us to be so “edgy” with our gardening timing and our attempts to be “on the edge” of what’s possible? We generally think you benefit more by having your plants outside, growing in the ground/container/bed, than you do by playing things “super safe.” This all translates to sooner and bigger harvests. The truth is, even if you play things “super safe”…then, along comes something like this hail storm and you get whacked anyway.
We’re going to weather this one just fine, just like we have weathered countless adverse events before this one. We’ve talked about it before, but it’s really those frosts you have to worry about. Those can be garden ending events. But, a hail storm? Sure, your plants aren’t going to like it, they’re gonna have some holes and maybe look like they got run over by a truck. But, they’ll survive and are going to keep growing!
Events like these might panic the newer grower, bringing them to great concern about the future of their plants and garden. Our position? “Eh, just another day at the northern garden!” Hopefully that gives you some perspective.
There’s so much about gardening that is entirely outside of our immediate control. Sometimes, you just have to ride things out and let the chips fall where they will. A lot of it is about pitting your skill and knowledge against the challenges of your environment. Sometimes you win, sometimes you will lose.
Growing in the far north is, at the least, exciting sometimes! There’s hardly a season where we’re not on our toes, responding to one thing or another. Hope you all are well and your gardens are packing on those pounds!
