Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum
General Subjects => Flowers and Foliage Now => Topic started by: Alberto on July 06, 2009, 08:19:03 PM
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Hi all. On last saturday I experienced what I had never saw in my life, almost about how hardy it was in my zone the hail-storm. For half an hour iced grains (at the beginning a few mm, then 1 cm, and at the end over 2 cm in diameter) had fallen from the sky on my plants. After that rain rain rain for just another half an hour: at the end all the garden was submerged in 10 cm of water.
Here are a few pictures.
Alberto
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More pictures:
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A further one:
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Today, in late afternoon I was able to take pictures of the damage:
Alocasia
Amarcrinum
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Further images:
Bulbous plants
Ficus elastica
Hedychium spicatum
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Alberto ,
it is really sad to see your garden and plants :'(
I hope all will survive and start new again
Dont give up !!!
Hans
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more...
Jasminum sambac.
Musella lasiocarpa
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more:
Senecio grandifolius
Plumeria
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just another:
Adenium obesum
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But nature is incredible. Just after two days the crinum looks like nothing happened and from the ground the surprise:
Crinum x powelli
Habranthus tubispathus
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Roberto, I can feel with you and am so sorry about this.
This is the worst thing which can happen to the gardeners.
It is wise to look for eventally occuring fungus and spray a
fungicide against it.
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Thank you Hans and Rudi. Luckily the weather is dry so I hope to have not too many diseases.
Alberto
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It's shocking to see hail on the ground amongst so many tropical species! (It's a very common occurrence here, with every thunderstorm, but a surprise to see it elsewhere.) I'm glad to hear the damage was minimal.
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Hail is terribly damaging to soft leaved plants and a valuable fruit crop such as kiwifruit, cherries or peaches can be destroyed in minutes. The worst that has happened here is that my hostas and meconopsis plants have been shredded to a salad-like mess. The good news is that though this season's plants are sometimes ravaged, it is only surface damage and next year's will be fine. The plants themselves are not destroyed.
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Not good, Alberto. At least most of the things you are showing with damage will replace leaves etc easily enough. A few years ago we had a massive hail storm hit parts of Canberra (thankfully missed my place by less than a km), that literally stripped every leaf off friend's gardens and hit the National Botanic Gardens as well. A couple of years later there are still scars on the branches of so many trees and shrubs from the damage done. All leaves have been replaced, but bark still showing it on some plants. Thankfully by the looks of it yours will be right as rain as soon as some new leaves emerge.
And don't the Habranthus just give you a renewed hope? ;D Amidst the rain and damage they see it as a good thing and make a break for flowering!! ;) A Phoenix from the ashes!! 8)
Actually, from a renewal perspective...... about 10 years ago I brought home by first ever Japanese Sacred Lotus (Nelumbo sp) on the 28th of December from holidays down the coast. I put it out into a water bowl the next day and admired the lovely leaves. On the 31st we go hit by a hail storm and, as lesley put so well, they were shredded to a salad-like mess. I was mortified. Two weeks later there were 15 new leaves and you couldn't tell that anything had ever happened. Amazing regenerative capabilities!! :D
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wow! your first hail storm! hopefully you wont see another anytime soon....
like lori, we can have it here anytime in summer...last year i had a lot of minor damage to some shrub leaves etc--the non-native honeysuckle was prone to damage, the natives dont notice--this year we had some very early before there were many leaves, and not much since..
hope your plants are recovering fast..
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wow! your first hail storm! hopefully you wont see another anytime soon....
It was not the first, but the worst I had.
Alberto
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Hello Alberto !
It's a dreadful experience isn't it :( - I had the same 4 or 5 years ago - 15 cm of pingpong sized ice balls on the ground after the storm was over - a lot of plant leaves turned into mush... it was devastating just to have to look at it with nothing you can do... but don't despair - everything will recover !
Just give it some time. ;)
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Dear Alberto,
I am so sorry for that. O.k. everything will grow again but on the walk through the garden after the hailstorm I would have tears in the eyes. It takes so much time until the leaves of some plants are really big and five minutes to damage them - but as someone said, the Habranthus looks like Phoenix from the ashes.
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Hail is never a good thing, anywhere!
This area is called "Hail Alley", for the frequent hail we get, caused by proximity to the mountains and associated air turbulence, with some tendency of air to be swept upwards repeatedly into freezing temperatures... ?
We had a huge hail storm in early July, 1998. Hailstones up to the size of golf balls were bouncing off our poly greenhouse, and hitting the side of our house, 35 feet away! Everything in the yard, needless to say, was pureed. The storm sewers couldn't handle the rain, and were also soon blocked with hail... despite that our neighborhood is up on a hill, a car got stuck in the water standing on our front street, which has only a very slight, normally imperceptible dip in it. A few blocks away, in a major intersection in a shopping center area, the hail and water were 4' deep and blocking the intersection; the city had to get big equipment out to plow out the hail out so that the water could eventually drain, after the storm sewers thawed; it took a few days for the bulldozed piles of hail to melt away. About half the houses in our neighborhood (including ours) ended up needing new roofing and siding as a result of the hail damage. Luckily, the drainage here is such that we didn't get any water in our basement, but some neighbors were not so lucky. Anyway, the insured property damage from the storm ended up at $60 MM! (There was another major hailstorm in 1996, with $300 MM in damages! We were spared that one, as it pummelled the neighborhoods south of us.)
It's funny... growing up on the prairies (far from the mountains, where the weather is a great deal more predictable!), farmers dreaded the "Big White Combine" (hail)... but I only ever saw one real hailstorm there - just pea-sized, with small drifts left for a few hours, and no significant damage.
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Hail is never a good thing, anywhere!
This area is called "Hail Alley", for the frequent hail we get, caused by proximity to the mountains and associated air turbulence, with some tendency of air to be swept upwards repeatedly into freezing temperatures... ?
We had a huge hail storm in early July, 1998.
Hi Lori,
the one time I visited Calgary was after the NARGS July 1999 Conference at Banff; as we drove into Calgary to do some "post conference garden visits" we could see the hail clouds sweep through ahead of us! One garden we visited had virtually everything destroyed except one plant of Meconopsis punicea which was displaying its wonderful red drooping flowers. How and why had it survived? Only because the owner stood out in the middle of the storm sheltering it with an umbrella - while getting pelted with hail herself!! Yes, Rock and Alpine Gardeners are crazy but they have something to show their visitors!
cheers
fermi