Still Cold - Even In June

Apart from the first couple of days, it's been a cold start to June. Over the last few years, only 2012 has got off to a colder start than this year.

June Rolling Average Temperatures - 2010 - 2020

I had to look twice at the overnight low for 09 June when the temperature fell to 4.6°C (40.3°F). It's only the third time in 11 years that the temperature in June has fallen below the 5°C (41.0°F) mark. The figures are colour coded where darker red is above average and darker blue below average.

At least the rain has meant that we can get on planting out at the allotment. Hopefully, the plants will be acclimatised to the cool nighttime temperatures as they have been hardening off at home before their move down to the allotment. I do have a few worries about our sweetcorn which got planted out today as through lack of space it had been growing on in our cold greenhouse.

The plot is now starting to fill up. We still have plenty of space left to fill but weather permitting all our cultivated beds should be planted up over the next couple of weeks. We've two or three beds that need digging over. These became too dry to dig in the prolonged dry spell of weather and resembled concrete rather than soil. I'm hoping that the rain over the last few days will have magically converted the concrete back to soil.

The recent rainfall has done wonders for the potatoes. It's strange how rainfall seems so much better for crops than water from the tap.

The weather forecasts for the next few days are very mixed but it looks as though we are in for plenty of showers. I think our planting will have to be done in bits and pieces between the showers. At least we aren't spending most of the time at the plot watering.

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