A Gardener's Weather Diary: Big Improvement

Monday, 6 June 2016

Big Improvement

The weekend saw the change in the weather we had been waiting for. On Saturday the temperature lifted to more like we would expect for the beginning of June although it remained mostly overcast all day. Sunday saw the sun break through the cloud early on giving us a lovely warm and sunny day.

Temperature & Sunshine Records 03 June to 05 June 2016

Saturday and Sunday afternoons were spent on the plot sowing and planting as well as looking after other crops to make sure they were weed free and well watered. On the dreaded "not up to standard plot 28" I'm carrying out a little experiment.

I'm attempting to grow some runner beans and Climbing French beans up hazel stakes. These are the stakes the pea sticks have been cut from leaving some fairly sturdy poles. I thought about giving natural supports a try. I only had sufficient poles to make a wigwam rather than a tent type of frame. It wasn't quite as easy as I thought it would be as it's almost impossible to push the sturdy bases of the poles into the ground. I'm hoping I've set the base wide enough to stop the whole thing blowing over in strong winds.

The plants were left over from our main planting last week and so would more than likely have gone to waste. We've decided to make this bed into a hotchpotch of flowers and vegetables. So far as well as the beans we've included some chrysanthemums and dahlias to see how they do. We thought we might add some beetroot too.

We also managed to sow a couple of rows of Onward peas, plant more potatoes and also plant out our courgettes Sunstripe and Zucchini. In the plot greenhouse tomatoes Crimson Crush, Sungold, Gardener's Delight, Sunchocola, Mountain Magic, and Harbinger were all planted up in growbags with three plants to a bag.