There is no simple way. If the hail is large enough, it will punch through cardboard boxes, sheets, tarps, plastic buckets, etc.

Some people put five-gallon buckets turned upside down over their plants if hail is imminent, but usually by the time you know a storm with hail potential is coming your way, it is too late to cover them up. If the sun is out, you can't cover them up hours in advance of a potential storm because they'll roast.

We've lived here 12 years and only had hail damage once to our plants. I didn't cover them up. After the storm, I pruned off the damaged parts, cleaned up all the debris, and the plants recovered just fine. Our harvest was a little late because of the storm but we still had a harvest.

It takes some decent-sized hail to do severe harm. We've had dime to nickle-sized hail fall and not damage a thing. Once we had quarter-sized hail fall and it didn't do any damage to speak of, but it only fell for about 3 minutes. I believe the hail that damaged our plants that one time was about golfball-sized or slightly larger.

In Fort Worth, we had baseball-sized hail at least three times that I remember, and tennisball-sized hail a couple more times. They tore up everything, but when your home and cars are damaged, you really don't even have time to feel sorry for your poor garden plants.

We live in the southern plains and hail is a fact of life for us, but the odds of it hitting any one garden are fairly slim.

dawnrenee,
If you have a garden wedding, or bar mitzvah, or other special occasion planned for your garden, you dramatically increase your chances of hail damage. The best preventative measure is to remove all special occasions from your calendar immediately!

Oh gosh - I live in South Tulsa and we've had hail every spring since I can remember - even had the roof on the house totalled twice in the last 10 years because of it. And a windshield busted out of my Ford Explorer in December one year from hail. I'm betting on average we see one golf ball sized hail storm every year to year and a half. We usually get ample warning with the non stop weather alerts on tv during spring storm season, but even then, there's really not much you can do because as Dawn mentioned, hail will bust through almost you would use to cover or protect your plants if it's big enough. Yes, it punches holes but I call it natural pruning! LOL Most things in my garden seem to survive and recouperate well enough on their own, albeit some signs of the hail last until winter frost (like the holes in the hosta leaves.) If only my cars fared so well....

When the baseball to softball-sized hail hit my parents home in the late 1970s (I was already out and living on my own in a different city by then), it put holes through the roof and walls and knocked out their windows. I don't mean holes just in the roof and walls, but holes through the roof and ceiling and then through the exterior wall, insulation and interior wall. It was like a really angry giant walked around their home punching holes in the whole thing with his fist. By the time everything was fixed, they had new 'everything' except for the framing of the house, since the rain that poured in through the holes soaked the carpeting, furnishings, etc. The destructive power of large hail is almost beyond comprehension. If that kind of storm hits, and I say this as a die-hard gardener, you are too busy with everything else to even think about your plants. And, whichever plants survive monster hail likely won't survive the tree-trimming crews, insurance adjusters, roofers and construction guys who will trample everything as they work to assess and repair storm damage. They aren't uncaring....just too busy and overworked to tiptoe around your plants.

As a gardener, I probably fear hail's effect upon my garden more than anything else, but you really can't avoid it. Most veggie crops bounce back, except those like corn which cannot tolerate having their growing point broken.

I'm sitting here now watching the news about the horrendous tornadoes that hit Mississippi today.....at this point, hail seems so small by comparison.

I remember one time I had a small container garden on the balcony of my apartment, a tornado went through and broke the stems of about every plant. I took gardener's tape and taped the stems back together and staked them. And they continued to grow!!! I didn't know any better at the time, but it worked!!! Chalk one up for dumb luck....

Ezzirah,

I've done the same thing....saved plants by wrapping a plain old band-aid around the broken stalk. Hey, it worked! I guess you and I both lucked out in the 'how to save a plant' category.

Dawn