What a summer

It's been quite an adventure gardening here in the Husker state this year.
We started with a long, cold, wet spring, which morphed overnight into hail season.

I had hoped that the cold, wet spring would slow down the grasshoppers, but alas, that was not to be. As soon as it warmed up, they were out with a mission to eat everything in sight.

Then, the hail started. I'm up to 6 times on the garden now. 3 of those times were up to ping pong ball size.

The last storm was last Tuesday. I have to give the plants this, they are persistent. Most of them are regrowing leaves and sending out new blooms. For the longer season crops, like the melons and pumpkins, it's gonna be a race to frost now.

The root crops will be fine, the cukes and beans should still produce some.

My disappointment does not stem so much from the loss of crops to hail, nothing new around here, but that I had planted a lot of heirloom varieties and I'm not going to get the chance to see how they were.

Planting the heirlooms was a first for me this year, hence my disappointment.

Plus this was also my first serious attempt at vertical gardening and it was going quite hail.

Ah, well. Was looking through my 2011 seed catalogs and planning for next year!

One final thought on the hail. If Mother Nature insists it rain ice from the sky, it should come with Vodka and Bloody Mary mix!

Oh Hail!