Summer Begins with One Last Snow Storm

May snow storms are to be expected in Colorado, but a snow storm on May 11th was a tad bit too late for my liking. Oh well, what can ya do. Cover the garden, protect new plantings, and wait for the blue skies and bright sunshine to come back. Then, assess the damage. That's all you can do.

This May snow storm started with a couple of days of refreshing rain and thunderstorms. I enjoyed that to the fullest, even though pea-sized hail made an appearance somewhere in between.

May 7th hail. Small, but mighty

There's a lot of luck involved in getting your garden to survive a hail storm, and somehow I managed to get a load of it. Patrick happened to have the afternoon off, and was able to get the garden covered before everything got totally messed up. I may have lost a tomato or two (I won't really know until this snow melts), but everything seemed to survive okay thanks to the garden cover and hoop set-up we have going on.

You can see the covered garden to the right.

Once the snow melts and summer sets back in, I'll be following the hail/snow-survival protocol I covered three years ago in this post. Check it out if you need some tips for getting your garden back after the hail and snow we just experienced.

Saturday, the day before the snow storm, was a gorgeous spring day. It reached 70 degrees before the clouds moved in in the early evening. Everyone was out enjoying the weather before we were relegated to the indoors for the next couple of days.

May 10th. Roselle enjoying the Lilacs before the snow takes em out

Flower Child

Scout and Satchmo playing on Saturday morning

 Then, everything changed. Clouds rolled in, temperatures dropped and the wind started howling. Sunday morning we woke up to about two inches of snow, and it didn't stop until late Monday morning. By then, we had about 8 inches on the ground, even with the afternoon rain we got in between the hours of snow on Sunday.

Spring Snow May 11-12th. Picture taken Monday morning.

A rain interlude on Sunday afternoon cleared most of the snow off of the branches

Happy dogs in the park Sunday evening

The sun came out late Monday morning

 When you live snuggled up to the foothills, a lot can change in a small amount of time. This is what the garden looked like over the span of one week:

May 3rd. 80 degrees, sunny and filled with stubborn weeds

May 4th. 85, sunny and freshly planted with Thyme groundcover (I ran out of pea gravel mulch before I took this)

May 11th. 35 degrees and snow, then rain, then more snow. Covered in garden cloth.

We're not even in the clear yet! Lows are forecasted to reach the mid 20s tonight. Those freezing temperatures are even worse for the plants than the 8 inches of snow. I'll just have to wait and see how everything survives, then do some damage control before the summer gets into full swing.

A Minor Set Back

There's nothing quite like a hail storm to totally deflate a gardener. We get more hail in Fort Collins than I saw growing up in the Midwest. Couple that with too little rain and you've got a very tough place to be a gardener. But, there is always hope! I received some plant-saving tips from a local garden center the day after the storm. I put these tips into practice and the garden is already looking so much better.

The aftermath of the hail storm looked like this:



A sad garden

Shredded Strawberry plants



Lots of compost food

 I followed the garden center's tips and pinched off all damaged leaves, being very careful to leave slightly damaged and healthy leaves to provide energy for the struggling plants. Remembering that nothing is wasted that goes into the compost, I was content with the fact that I'd be able to use the depressing remnants of once-thriving plants to help plants thrive next year. There's nothing like compost to remind you of the ecological cycle! Then, I bought some "compost tea" (a liquid solution made by steeping compost in water) from the garden center and poured it on all of my veggies and most of the new perennials. I continued to water as needed. Now, about two weeks later, all but one plant (a Hubbard squash I wasn't too excited about anyway) have bounced back and grown many new leaves.

Yet another lesson learned -- no matter how dire the situation looks, there is almost always a way to save your plants. Just look to the experts; they've likely dealt with all of the set backs you will encounter more than once and have found a useful way to cope.