With all the state below a extreme thunderstorm watch by means of 8 p.m. Monday, homesteaders and gardeners might wish to take a couple of minutes to organize vegetation and livestock for any weather-related risks that might move overhead.
Extreme thunderstorms can include heavy rain, sturdy winds or hail. On Sunday a extreme storm hit close to Eagle Lake with reported tennis ball-sized hail and rotational winds just like a twister, in accordance to the Nationwide Climate Service Workplace in Caribou.
Monday’s climate was predicted to carry a lot of the identical, together with the chance that some thunderstorms might produce a twister. Based on gardening and livestock specialists within the state, there are issues you are able to do to maintain your vegetation and animals protected and out of hurt’s method for this and future storms.
“It’s at all times good to have a safe location to place your livestock in like a barn,” mentioned Colt Knight, livestock specialist with College of Maine Cooperative Extension. “For probably the most half, when you present a superb shelter, they’re good sufficient to put it to use.”
Whereas the sorts of hail storms frequent to Maine are usually not more likely to hurt bigger livestock like cattle, goats or sheep, Knight did say a storm persevering with even regular dimension hail can decimate a flock of chickens or turkeys in the event that they haven’t any place to take shelter.
And that shelter needs to be sturdy, Knight mentioned.
“More often than not individuals new to livestock or individuals doing it on a small scale can have stuff thrown collectively or made out of pallets,” he mentioned. “Hen tractors particularly can simply turn out to be sails so you might have to anchor these down if they’re mild sufficient.”
Hen tractors are movable coops with out flooring. They’re usually frivolously constructed so a single individual can drag them round a yard or grassy space by themselves.
Final yr, a lightning strike killed eight cows at a farm in Winslow, however that was an uncommon prevalence, Knight mentioned on the time.
Shelter can also be essential for crops, based on Brett Johnson, sustainable agriculture and horticulture skilled at College of Maine Cooperative Extension.
A number of the greatest safety can come from low tunnels, one thing Johnson predicts will turn out to be more and more frequent in Maine as gardeners and homesteaders look to elongate the everyday quick rising season within the state.
Low tunnels are quick — normally below 3-feet tall — and use arched helps to carry plastic or different varieties of row cowl over vegetation.
“Particularly when coping with sinds and smaller hail occasions, they’ll positively be helpful in defending vegetation from injury,” Johnson mentioned. “However they do include lots of consideration since you need to have the ability to take away the tunnel on actually sizzling days.”
Since hail storms can hit all of the sudden, it’s a good suggestion to have some short-term plant shelters on the prepared. Issues like buckets, trash cans, cardboard, plastic tarps and even material sheets can simply be positioned over vegetation after which eliminated when the storm passes.
However you’ll want to weigh or tie down your short-term buildings so that they don’t blow away.
It’s additionally a good suggestion to harden off any seedlings earlier than transplanting them, even in midsummer.
“You wish to be certain that they’ve been acclimated to the prevalent climate circumstances,” Johnson mentioned. “Particularly with vegetation that develop upright on lengthy stems they’re more likely to break in heavy winds, so ensuring they’re good and acclimated is certainly a superb technique.”
What you do after the storm is simply as essential because the preparation, based on the specialists.
“It’s actually essential as soon as it’s protected to go outdoors to go test in your animals,” Knight mentioned. “Particularly search for down bushes or limbs as a result of they’ll knock over fences, quick out electrical fences or break home windows in barns.”
That type of injury can enable livestock to flee, he mentioned.
In relation to vegetation, it’s usually the leaves which might be probably the most broken by a hail storm, Johnson mentioned. And the worst of that injury can come lengthy after the storm is gone.
“The principle factor I’d be involved about after a hail storm is it could actually open the vegetation to larger possibilities of ailments that proliferate in broken vegetation,” Johnson mentioned. “There are specific pathogens which might be unable to contaminate the plant straight so that they must enter by means of wounds.”
Johnson recommends pruning off any components of a plant that reveals injury from hail or wind. However await dryer climate, he mentioned.
“After I was in my grasp’s [degree] program I had a professor who would say ‘You at all times plan for the worst climate,’” Knight mentioned. “That method when it’s common or above common you’ll be able to name it a superb yr.”
