Surviving The Storm

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]today. I didn't know I'd be doing this video, and I sure didn't think it would be a damage report.

[00:00:12][music] Hey guys, Jeff here in central Texas. And when I say I didn't think I'd be doing this video, I didn't think I'd be doing a video on this topic. But it is a damage report and it's also a encouraging report for those of you who have small backyard gardens or you have fairly large gardens or you're a farmer.

[00:00:33]You may have dealt with bad weather before. And if you've never done this before, you're like, "How do I deal?"

[00:00:39]Especially if we have strong winds, high winds, and pounding rain. What's going to happen? I put all this time, I put all this effort into a garden. Is it all going to be for nothing? And so this, even though I'm going to show you some damage, I'm going to also be an encouragement to you. So, let me show you here at Whirlwind Family Farm. If you've never seen our channel before, we are a market garden about an acre, but we also really spend a lot of time talking about those of you who want to raise food and have good sustainable food in your backyard, nutrient-dense organic vegetables. So, that's what we deal with. So, let's get right to it. I'm going to flip the camera around. And if you've ever watched my channel, you'll know this is our northwest section. And last night, I came out after the storm. And I'll tell you, right here is yellow squash. And all of these plants were leaning that way because we had a 70 up to 70 mph gust pushing against these yellow squash. And they were all leaning that way. But I've done this long enough to know that once we got to today, literally when I come out this morning, they had already kind of writed themselves, straightened back up. And that's incredible. I did lose one squash right in here. You can see I've already replaced it. I always keep some replacement squash in a um one of our seed trays. So, that's one of the tricks out here is always keep a few extra going because we deal with vine bores as well. That's a whole another story. But anyway, it got broken off. It's already been replaced. And you can see this area is doing pretty good. But we did have some damage. That was one of them. But if you look right here, that is black eyed peas. They don't look like they've had any damage. Over here is more squash. So, let's walk down and take a look at something that we dealt with last night. First of all, another thing I want to bring up as we walk down. If you look, I'm walking along my high tunnels here. So, I want to give a shout out to Farmer's Friend. They're over in Tennessee. And these tunnels, these high tunnels, hoop houses are now on their fifth season. And I'm telling you, they have endured a lot. 70 m 75 mph gust last night. And I know two years ago, we had a storm that rolled through about this same time of year and we had a 100 mph gust and they're still standing and they're still still doing well. So, if I have to give a shout out for a product, it's definitely Farmer's Friend, their high tunnels. These are their older models, but they have some that are even better now. So check them out if you're in need of a high tunnel. Uh they're not a sponsor. I just like the product and they're good, kind people. Okay, back to what we dealt with out here. So I call this my bonus area. And I will tell you also, this is the area that's most susceptible to high wind. This is a little center growing area in between these two high tunnels. And I'll tell you, these two high tunnels almost act like a wind tunnel and funnel wind right through this area. But as you can see, if you look right there, those are bush beans providers, and those were planted about 3 weeks ago. And other than we had a little bit of lean, a little bit of lean over, and I've gone in and kind of straightened these up this morning.

[00:03:49]They're doing fine. Right here, some snow peas. That's cover crop. No big deal. Carrots. Carrots weren't even affected. And carrots are really good about enduring a storm, going through a storm. And as I come down here on the edge, this is kind of one of those little miracles, too. I planted some bunch onions in there about 3 weeks ago.

[00:04:07]And if you look at that, look in there closely. You would think next to this high tunnel that would all get washed away. And it didn't. Those little bunch onions right there have really held in there after they germinated. And with all the water again that comes off the side of this, they just held in there tight and they're continuing to flourish, continuing to do well. So, here's the part where we had a little bit more damage. And I've already kind of rided the ship, so to speak, this morning. And I'll show you exactly what I'm talking about. I'm going to flip the camera around here. And if you look, if you just look at this casually, you would think, well, Jeff, you have two pole beans. I've seen some of your videos before. You've talked about this.

[00:04:50]What's the big deal? Well, this one right here in the front, when I came out last night and this morning, it was laying right flat down on the ground.

[00:04:58]And uh little disappointing, but I will tell you a little insight. I noticed this year when I started planting these pole beans, a couple of these poles down here had a crack in them. And I thought, well, we'll get through another season.

[00:05:11]Let's go ahead and let's go ahead and get them started. Well, that was a mistake because I noticed that two of those poles with that heavy wind last night did collapse in. This fell down.

[00:05:21]And I'll tell you what I did is I come out this morning. I have a couple extra Tpost. So, I'm going to show you what I did is I came in right next to it, drove in a Tpost right there, put a zip tie around it. So, that's going to get us through the season. And I'll tell you, these are not big producers for us. We kind of like them just for their looks.

[00:05:39]And we like to show them as an illustration. You can grow green beans in a very tight, very small space with your pole beans, and we just enjoy having them. This one's fine. Its structure is strong. If I walk over here to this um excuse me, I'll just zoom out there. Walk over and I just grab hold of this. Man, it is solid. It is solid in there. And those green beans actually add add as an anchor as well. But this one finally met its match last night and completely fell down. The good news is they're still rooted. They're still in there. I got this thing rided again. And so that was some damage we dealt with last night. So, another thing I'm going to show you I have dealt with out here every single season I've ever had this farm is I'll go in and we plant a lot of our okra through seed trays. We'll start off our okra in the seed trays so they get to be about two or three inches tall and then we transplant out. And that's exactly what we do. You'll see right here that's okra that's about 200 okra plants. Those are 50 foot rows and we put them about 15 inches apart. Well, if you look real close, you see these little divots right next to the plants.

[00:06:47]I already came out early this morning because about 30 or 40 of the 40 of these little okra seedlings really were leaning almost like a 45 degree angle.

[00:06:58]They were leaning forward and um they'll still grow. I actually had one out here several years ago. It was right over here in this north end. It got blown over in one of these storms. It was a little bit later in the season, maybe first part of June, and these plants were a little bigger. And at that point, I didn't want to disturb them or try to move them or manipulate their their direction, their standing. So, I left it. So, that plant stayed about like that, but still produced okra exactly the same. But when they're in this smaller state, and I'll tell you, several of these this morning were leaning over. In fact, my fear was that some of them were broken down at the base, but none of them were. So, I just come in and you can see I just take my hands. I take a little bit of soil and I'll show you. I just zoom out. I just take a little bit of soil, reach in with my hand like this. And that north wind was blowing this way and pushing those plants over. So, they were leaned over to the south and I just come in with a little bit of soil, come in and just push that plant back up. Pat that. just give it a little bit of a good base where it's got some um dirt around the bottom that just really helps it hold.

[00:08:07]And the next time we have a strong wind out of the north, now it's got that support of that soil right there on the south end. So, that's another thing that I had to deal with. It took me about 45 minutes. Not a big deal. I've dealt with that, like I said, every single year.

[00:08:21]I've had to come in and straighten up those little seedlings with my okra. And here in about 3 weeks, they'll start to get really woody, really strong. And that's the thing about okchra plants, man. They'll go up to five, six foot tall and they're almost like a tree is the best way to describe ochre if you've never raised them before. And they are tough and they'll endure heat and they'll in fact one of the few plants that will kind of endure a little bit of a hail stom. I wouldn't say a big hail stom, but they can make it through that.

[00:08:49]There's not many things that do make it through a hail storm. I will tell you the times that we've had to live through those. The other thing that I also had to clean up this morning, a part of this damage report was our blackberry. We had several blackberry canes that I had to come in. They were leaning over, laying over this morning, some of these canes.

[00:09:08]And I'll tell you, some of that has to do with me as well. Is I did not prune as heavy with these blackberry plants as I have in years past. I just wanted to see I've done years where I have I have really done a very extensive uh pruning with my blackberries and this year I want to go you know what I'm just going to come in take some of the older canes off top canes off and leave it at that and I think it's turned out well but I will tell you because of that you'll come in you can see where I've already come in I've had to top some of these when I came out this morning I had canes that were laying all out in here so I had to come along with my uh pruning shears and clean that up this morning to get them back into shape. But all is well. And I'll tell you, it would take a heck of a storm to get rid of blackberries. I don't know that you can get rid of blackberries. I think they're going to continue to grow. I always kind of compare them to Bermuda grass. They have those runners that go underground and they'll pop up 20, 30 feet away from the mother plant and keep on going. It's a joke I have with my kids if if they inherit this land, and hopefully they will, is that they're going to probably be um not happy with me after I'm long gone, they're like, "Why did dad plant so many blackberry plants?" Because now they're everywhere. And so, whoever ends up owning this land, they're going to deal with these for a long, long time.

[00:10:29]So, that's pretty much what we dealt with. I'm going to show you one other area. My wife put some cantaloupe in here uh the last couple of days and I will tell you looking at that they have really held in there well. Little bit of mud, a little bit of leaning over, but they'll recover. Um here's some more of those bunch or excuse me bush beans, provider beans, green beans. I had some that were a little pushed over this morning and I just did the same thing as I did with the okra. I just come in and just pull a little soil in and pull them back up gently. You got to be careful.

[00:11:02]You don't you don't want to risk breaking them. And if they're not leaned much, don't worry about it. They're going to straighten up anyway. Uh there's another group of okra that I have direct seeded. I haven't thinned these out yet. Uh I think the rain was a little bit tough on them. Kind of pounding last night, so hopefully we didn't lose some of that germination, but you can see that's a row of okra that I'm just kind of put in as a backup and extra. These are some zucchini. Uh my wife planted that those last three or four right there a few days ago. They're doing fine. They got pounded last night.

[00:11:34]Right next to it is blackeyed peas. They were a little ruffled up this morning leaning over. Here we are almost noon after that storm and they don't look worse for wear at all. If you look down through there, they don't even look like they've been through anything. So that's kind of our damage report this morning.

[00:11:51]Nothing big. And I will tell you, if you would have talked to me at about 7:30 last night, I would have told you, I don't know. It looks bad. 75 mph gust.

[00:12:03]We had a couple of minutes there, which it's one of those things you just kind of hold your breath. We had like a little small marblesiz hail and I'm like, "Oh gosh, I hope this doesn't keep going." Because that will do lots of damage. That will shred plants. And I've had plants even come back after they've had some of their leaves shredded after a hail storm. So, just tell you that's possible, too. But a bad hell storm can really end it. And hell stom also does damage to our drip lines. Uh, the last time I had a big hail stom out here about three years ago, it damaged about 80% of our drip lines and had to come in redo those and that's a pain and expensive.

[00:12:41]So the thing I want to encourage you, those of you who have never gardened before or you have a small garden and you see that storm coming and maybe you don't have like we have many things that we grow in high tunnels and you don't have that protection and I will tell you even that as my son said last night that um sun shade or that shade covering right there that shade cloth it acts as not only protection from the sun but it's also kind of like a trampoline. It's just provides that cushion against hailstones that hit that plastic. So, it kind of has a dual capability there. Not only providing that shade, but you can see it does a good job of of repelling hellstones. So, if you don't have a structure like that and everything you have is outdoors, there's a good chance it's going to survive, especially if it's not a bad hail stom, 75 mph winds, wind blowing sideways, whipping things around. Um, I've got a camera mounted right over there, an outdoor camera. I put it there to make sure that my gate's always closed because we have jack rabbits that love to come in here. So, I always make sure that that gate is closed. So, it also serves as kind of live. I can watch this farm live. And last night when I looked out here, all of these plants were just whipping back and forth. And it just it's a tough thing to watch because you think, gosh, they're going to literally be snapped off and broken. and all the time and effort and watering, putting down compost was for nothing. I won't say it's for nothing, but it, you know, the frustration of seeing that you could lose u a several or a large part of your crop. And when you come out this morning and you see that so many things survived, so many things held in there without any issues, without any problems, it just goes to show you how durable a lot of these vegetable plants can be. And um you know that's just the way nature made these plants. And my my son to give him he always has the wisdom. He goes, "Dad, a lot you look at all these weeds out here behind me out here in an open field. They make it every single year. Nobody's telling them. Nobody's protecting them and they do fine." And I go, "Yeah, but they're weeds." But again, garden plants have some of that resilience as well. So guys, hang in there. If you've been through a storm like this, you understand if you ever are in that situation, you see that storm coming, if you can put some sort of covering, if you can have a row cover, that's great.

[00:15:09]But if not, everything may be okay. And so I want to encourage you in that.

[00:15:12]Guys, we always appreciate for finding our channel here at Whirlwind Family Farm. It means a lot to our channel when you like, subscribe, hit that bell for notification because each week we gonna we're going to have more content that can kind of show you insights as to what we do. You can give your input. We always love comments because you may have been gardening longer than me and you can give us awesome insight of better ways to do things. And also we have the hype button now. Somewhere down here is hype. Hit hype. That means a lot. That helps our channel further along as well. And uh we'll have another video for you that YouTube will suggest right over here. Check that out, guys.

[00:15:50]Blessings. Talk to you soon. Hopefully no bad storms in your area. Talk to you soon from Whirlwind Family Farm.