Just in Time for Christmas.

 These lovely green feast peas are ready just in time for Christmas. R just picked 1.145 kgs.

 Last evening I also dug the first new season's Agria potatoes- very yummy as only freshly dug spuddies can be.

Some on the peas, here spread out on the bench, have little white spots or dings on them caused by hail that fell on Friday evening.

  As they were almost ready anyway it won't effect their eating or keeping quality.

 What it has made a difference to is the young kiwifruit.

 These are 3 I picked showing the scars where the hail stones hit. Today we have to start assessing the % damage for an insurance claim. ( this is our 34th crop and we have never had to do this before so pretty lucky I guess.)

The leaves in the upper canopy got shredded and have protected the fruit below to some extent, but not completely. The damage is worst along the sides of blocks and where there were gaps in the canopy. The male vines had just been pruned leaving quite open gaps.

 Leaves with this damage will not photosynthesise well.

 Luckily there is a large crop so we hope not too many will have to be thrown on the ground with hail damage. We have yet to see if the young avocados are damaged. ( it takes a few days for bruises to show ) 

 A dictionary definition of hail says:-

 pellets of ice that form when updrafts in a thunder storm carry raindrops to a high altitude where water  freezes and then falls back to earth. 

 Yep that's what we got: thunder ;lightning ;then hail and then rain. Only the hail did damage.