Quarter sized hail and tornado winds destroyed everything in the pumpkin patch last night. In the space of 3-4 minutes everything was gone. The most wicked storm I have ever seen. At one point the hail was literally moving horizontal and I couldn't see my street it was so thick. In the end there was 2' of hail piled up in the yard, an 8" thick three trunk was sheared at the stump directly across the street, power was out, broken tree limbs everywhere, a house was crushed 6 houses down from a fallen tree and some broken windows on the street. My house for the most part appears okay. Screens are broken and some minor roof damage. The pumpkin patch is a total loss however. The pumpkin looks like the surface of the moon and there is literally not a leaf to be found. The stumps look okay so I'll see if something will grow out of them for my own interest but there won't be any pumpkins this year going to the scale.
Until next year!
10 comments:
Jamie,
My condolences. All that hard work...
You may recall me, the "Scale Master" at the Arvada October festival a couple of years ago when you won at 205#.
My garden may look just like your pumpkin patch (Arvada Community Garden at 56th street). I'll go look tomorrow. I took a break from pumpkins and planted sweet corn in my spot. I suspect it blew to Kansas.
I bet we will both be back next year! Not gonna' let a little tornado stop us.
Good Luck!
--
Alan
Jaime, So sad to see. Mother Nature gives and sometimes takes back. You'll get em next year.
Jim in Henderson
Thats really horrible man. Been checking your page every few days to watch your progress and did not expect that! I'm starting over in Fla on mine, and luckily get two planting seasons a year here.
Thanks everyone for your comments. I'm going to see if the pumpkin will still grow a little in the hopes of getting seeds out of it. If not then I will start my patch prep early for next year and start shopping around for hail netting. Grow a big one for me!
I just a two weeks ago pulled my plants because of salt toxicity. Leaves kept dying by the droves.
However. Directly at the stump, entirely new secondaries kept starting and growing like mad. You could possibly get several new vines in a matter of a couple weeks and set at least one small pumpkin for the seeds.
Thanks Paul. I've considered doing that. I found out as of this morning the pumpkin on the 1350 plant is still growing to my amazement. About two hours before the storm hit I took measurements and then the morning two days later I took measurements again and to my suprise the pumpkin had grown three inches. I put down some fertilizer this evening in the hopes of keeping it going. Maybe some seeds might happen from that plant.
Paul - I had soil sodium issues just before the season started. In either March or April posts on this blog I talked about what I did and it seemed to work to get the sodium down. Depending on the source of the sodium you can flush most of it out with a couple good soil flushes. Hard to do it with plants but it will get you ready for next year.
My salt issues arose from my water. We hit a very hot and dry period, and I had to irrigate frequently. Misting the leaves with the well water here, quickly scorched them, and the plants themselves soaked up a ton of salt. My water tests I just recieved today show the well water salts at 1392 PPM.
I'm in Fla, and we have a planting season in March and August, so I will be putting a 1096 Privitera in the ground in another week or two. Along with about 250 gallons worth of rain barrels to irrigate with. Our soil is very well drained, and we get at least two heavy downpours a week, so I'm reasonablt sure the soil has been flushed well enough.
I have been checking your blog every few days and checking your progress against mine. I'm just growing a simple generic Prizewinner Hybrid here in northern Indiana, but it was interesting to watch your progress and gain some tips. Sorry about your pumpkins, that's really dissapointing. It sounded like a pretty enjoyable storm to watch, though.
Thanks. I heard the growing from other growers in Indiana has been good this year. Hopefully you got a good one going. Quite the storm to watch. In the first 30 seconds of it I knew my pumpkin season was done. Then the storm got unbelieveably violent and a little scary. From the basement I watched out of a window well the most brilliant lightning storm you could imagine. Blue and green lightning about once every 2 seconds. It looked like a strobe light. If it wasn't for a fact that I thought (and still believe) I was inside of a tornado it was quite the scene to watch.
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