The forecast was for some overnight rain Wednesday night into Thursday morning but it didn't happen. We had a few spots of rain late on Wednesday night but not enough to trouble the rain gauge. Thursday was quite sunny and very pleasant with temperatures around what we'd expect approaching the middle of May.
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| Temperature & Rainfall Records 05-11 May 2017 |
So far this month we've only had 4.8mm (0.2in) of rainfall and parts of the plot would benefit from a drop of rain. Over the course of a month or so the allotment has gone from too wet to almost too dry. We gardeners are hard to please as far as the weather goes but the fact is we are now having to water parts of the plot. I've still got a couple of large beds to dig over and confusingly I'm not too sure if they'll turn out to be too wet or too dry to cultivate. I might find out if we visit the plot on Friday afternoon.
I posted last week that a sowing of courgette seeds, Defender, hadn't germinated. It wasn't a case of poor germination as none of the seeds sown germinated and they were in date and purchased as new seed this year and not last year's leftovers.
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| Seeds sown 22 April 2018 - photo taken 09 May 2018 |
As a follow up on 03 May I sowed the remaining 6 seeds of Defender and 9 seeds of a yellow variety of courgette called Atena Polka.
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| Photo taken 03 May 2018 |
This was a bit of a test and I thought at least a couple of Defender seeds would germinate and I'd be able to compare the difference in germination times of the two varieties.
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| Photo taken 09 May 2018 |
A week on and you can see that all the Atena Polka seeds have germinated and not a single one of Defender has.
I've bought another packet of courgette seeds, Zucchini a green variety, from our local garden centre and sowed some of those yesterday.
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I'm having the same problem, but with cucumbers. They just won't germinate.
ReplyDeleteAt least our yellow courgettes have germinated. We must be lucky as our cucumbers have germinated.
DeleteThank you for lovely update Martyn i have not grown any Courgettes as yet but all my long green cucumbers germinated blessings to you both
ReplyDeleteOur cucumbers are doing okay Linda. I'd normally say courgettes are much easier to grow than courgettes. Now I'm not so sure!
Delete9-0 That's a pretty conclusive result! Happy to report a 2 out of three germination for my backup Romanesco courgette. Together with the three yellow that will be more than enough for us. This will be the first year without Defender in years.
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