The long-awaited warm, sunny days of summer have finally arrived bringing leaf-laden trees, glorious flowers, a thriving vegetable garden–and HAIL! In a matter of moments it furiously pelts, bruises, shreds and smashes everything. Now what do you do?

The first task is to survey your garden carefully and assess the damage. You then can plan a course of action based on the kinds of plants injured, the extent of injury and the amount of time left in the growing season.

Vegetable gardens are remarkably adept at bouncing back after hailstorms. Remove the damaged outer leaves of lettuce, spinach and other leafy crops. If leafy vegetables show no signs of new growth after a week, replace them. Lettuce seeds can be sown all season long. Root crops, such as radishes and beets, will survive as long as the tops aren’t too badly damaged. If these plants are damaged beyond repair, you’ll need to wait until the soil cools down in September to replant as the seeds won’t germinate in soil that is too warm. When cleaning up, trim sparingly. You should leave as much of the tops as possible.  For tomatoes and peppers, prune out the damage…if it looks like more that half of the plant is gone, it will probably be best to replace with large healthy transplants from a garden center.  Although the damaged plants would more than likely come back, by the time they catch up to where they were, it might be too late to get a worthy harvest.  Be sure to lightly fertilize after cleaning up damage to give the plants a good head start with their recovery.

Perhaps most important…don’t get discouraged.  Gardening is trail and error and we are at the mercy of mother nature.  In just a few short weeks, you’ll forget about the storms as you’re enjoying fresh produce from your garden.