Tuesday 9 June 2015

Flaming June!

The weather doesn’t get any better. The gale force winds of the last few days abated but still left a cold nagging breeze. In the early hours of Tuesday morning the temperature fell to 4.1°C (39.4°F) the coldest June temperature I’ve recorded in six years of record keeping. 
Some of our squashes, pumpkins and courgettes planted out last Friday didn't survive the gale force winds of Saturday.
I’d also planted some tomato plants outside on the plot. These were the ones I hadn’t any space for in either our home or plot greenhouses. If you remember I was going to plant our trial Crimson Crush tomato plant alongside these to see if it was blight resistant. I’m not sure that the outdoor tomatoes are going to survive this cold and windy weather. Our greenhouse tomato are growing well protected from the cold wind.
Outside is a different story, they don’t look so good.

Fortunately I didn’t get round to planting out our Crimson Crush variety and it’s still growing rapidly in the more favourable conditions of our home greenhouse. I think I might find a sheltered  spot for it at home and grow it in a large pot. It seems a bit of a waste to plant it out in the plot too soon.
 
Our sweet corn, climbing french beans and runner beans are all waiting at home to be planted out. They wont hold out much longer before they suffer a set back growing in small pots. I’ll soon have to take the risk that the weather will improve. After all it is flaming June.

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett

3 comments:

  1. Sorry to hear your plants took a battering.
    Summer veg plants really are struggling to get started this year (even in the SE here). My squashes etc still only have two seed leaves in the cold frame, but at least they escaped being wrecked on the plot (the poor optimist on our plots has had the second lot of squashes killed this week - probably by the cold nights and daytime desiccating winds). If it's any consolation my outdoor tomatoes look just like yours too ! The beans still only have three leaves and the sweetcorn looks like it may not survive the nights much longer. They all need some stable, warm weather to outgrow the damage and poor growth.

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  2. P.S. I know it is an extra job (who needs more?) - but I have planted squashes with a lot of leaf with a small cane and tied in the main stem which is always a weak point. The cane can come out later.

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    Replies
    1. We're planting out our sweetcorn, runner beans and climbing french beans today (Thursday). I'm hoping the squashes etc that weren't too badly damaged will survive. Any that don't I might replace with a courgette seed and see what happens. Thanks for the tip about using a cane with the squashes.

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