A Gardener's Weather Diary: Weird Sky and Looking Forward to Spring Cabbage

Sunday, 15 September 2019

Weird Sky and Looking Forward to Spring Cabbage

After a very cold start Saturday was a pleasant sunny day but with a very strange sunset.

We are in a particularly dry spell of weather with very little rainfall over the last month. We've had small amounts of drizzly rain on a number of days but it's not been enough to do any good for watering plants. We took pity on our brassicas and leeks at the allotment and gave them a good soaking.

Temperature and Rainfall Records 16 August - 15 September 2019

Over the course of a month we'd expect around 50mm or 2in of rainfall rather than the 25mm or 1in we've actually had over the last 4 weeks. It also includes a very hot week at the end of August so it's not surprising with virtually no rainfall to speak of since that hot spell that the ground is very dry.

I sowed some spring cabbage on 29 July directly on the plot after some sown at home were devoured by snails soon after germinating. Surprising the amount of damage they do even in a dry spell of weather.

Spring cabbage 'April' sown on plot

They've been watered regularly and have produced some good plants but they needed thinning out and transplanting into our winter brassica bed. With the ground being very dry I've kept putting off transplanting them but decided on Saturday it couldn't be delayed any longer.

Although it might not look like it from the photo above, they received lots of water during the transplanting process with each row getting a couple of cans of water. Hopefully, they'll recover from the shock and produce some tasty cabbages next spring. They were covered with environmesh in an attempt to keep the cabbage white butterflies and pigeons at bay. There doesn't appear to be much rainfall in the forecast for the next week so it will be important to keep them well watered until they get established.