Tuesday, 28 April 2020

Lockdown Day 36 - Will Anything Grow It’s That Time of Year?

The weather continues to be sunny and dry. The last few days have been warmer but the wind is still from a cold easterly direction. Today, Tuesday, 28 April 2020 has started off dull, cloudy and cool. The forecast is for some light showers later today and maybe some more prolonged periods of rain before the end of the month. Our monthly total stands at 0.8mm (0.03in) which will be a record low if we don't get any rain before the end of the month.

It’s that time of year on the plot when there appears to be lots of bare ground and nothing is growing. This year I think it looks even more pronounced with the dry bare ground.
All our fruit bushes and trees are doing their thing, greening up and flowering but it’s the ground where the onions, shallots, peas, carrots, parsnips and potatoes are planted that are all still bare. 
What happens if they don’t grow? They always have in the past in varying degrees of success but it always crosses my mind that they might not especially during this dry spell of weather. Other beds need digging over but the ground is now a bit too dry and I've decided to wait until we get a drop of rain before digging over any more beds. The job will be so much easier after a spell of rain. The plot has gone from being waterlogged in the middle of March to very dry by the end of April. Since the 16th March we have had a total of 3.2mm (0.13in) of rain and in the 6 week period up to the 16th March we had 196.0mm (7.72in) of rainfall. A little bit of consistency would be welcome. 


3 comments:

  1. I like these pictures. Here it seems that if we get rain, it comes when the citrus are blooming and the resulting crop is very low.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh, and I wanted to add: I think we've skipped early spring this year. Maybe, maybe not. May Gray and June Gloom are still to come, but the early heat wave has wiped out most of what was expected.

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    2. After a sunny and mild (for April) month I can see May might turn out to be disappointing here.

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