A Gardener's Weather Diary: 2024

Monday, 29 April 2024

Concern shifts from wet to cold

Throughout April our concern has been the lack of anything resembling a dry spell of weather. However, the latter half of the month has been drier and the ground has been steadily improving to a state where it is fit to cultivate. The trade-off for the drier weather has been for colder weather, with daytime temperatures below average for the second half of April.

Tuesday, 23 April 2024

Flexible planting plans

We still haven’t managed anything like a spell of good weather. We have to go back to the first 3 days of February for a run of 3 consecutive days without rain.

However, the good news is that drying is outpacing any new rainfall for now and the soil at the allotment is gradually becoming workable.

Monday, 15 April 2024

Has it been that wet?

It almost goes without saying that if it rains a lot then we are told it’s the worst it has ever been. It seemed a very wet start to the year so I thought I’d look back at previous years and see if we’ve had wetter starts. It would be interesting to see how we dealt with wetter years than this one if indeed we’ve had a wetter start.

Monday, 8 April 2024

It’s beginning to get critical

We’ve had plenty more rain through the first week of April. The amount so far is 25mm or around 1″ and about half a month’s rainfall. That wouldn’t normally be too much of a problem, but as the ground was already well saturated at the end of March, more rainfall hasn’t helped any drying out of the ground at the allotment.

Wednesday, 3 April 2024

Gardening Judgement – our earlies are in

Normally at this time of the year, we try to decide on the correct timing for sowing and planting all sorts of seeds. There’s no scientific basis for the decisions it is all based on experience and some guesswork regarding the weather. February has seemed like a wet month even though rainfall has been about average. It’s due to all the rainfall coming in the form of showers resulting in some rainfall on most days.

It did set me thinking that perhaps the first three months of the year have been particularly wet but, as you can see from the charts, that’s not the case.

Monday, 25 March 2024

Are we behind or not at the allotment?

It looks like it will be another weekend with very little work done on the plot. The weather continues in an unpleasant mode with a mixture of sunshine and showers accompanied by some strong to gale-force winds. It’s not that we’ve had a tremendous amount of rain through the week but we don’t seem to be able to manage more than a dry day at a time. We haven’t done any work on preparing beds for planting since last September.

Sunday, 17 March 2024

Indoor Plant Recovery Centre

It’s been another miserable week weatherwise, with more showery rain and dull overcast days. Saturday morning broke the rules with some lovely sunshine but it only lasted until lunchtime. For a few hours, it felt like a different world after what seemed like months of gloomy weather.

At home, a south facing window acts as a plant recovery centre. It’s used mainly to get our tenderest plants through winter but it’s a good place to get cuttings rooted when it’s too cold in the greenhouse. Last year I took some cuttings of a weeping fig and they’ve now grown into some decent-sized plants but along with the weeping fig, a couple of fern plants have appeared. The fern plants gave the impression that they would take over, so I decided to see if I could repot and remove them.

Sunday, 10 March 2024

Land of Gloom

We’re in a spell of what can only be described as perpetual gloom. The cloud level does vary throughout the day from light clouds almost letting sunshine through to heavy clouds with light misty rain. The forecast suggests we might have another week of this to come. After a mild February, March hasn’t got off to a very warm start. It’s good to tell that it’s the start of our gardening season.

Monday, 4 March 2024

A mild and wet February

I’m in good company as the Met Office in the UK has said this February is the mildest on record. It’s the mildest I’ve recorded over my fifteen years of record keeping too. This year the average temperature I've recorded at home was 7.4°C (45.3°F) beating the previous record set last year of 6.9°C or 44.4°F. The Met Office has given a figure of 7.5°C for this February. I have to say though a quick check online of the Central England Temperature Record suggests February 1779 was 7.9°C so maybe this February isn't the warmest ever.

Sunday, 25 February 2024

Swapping Rain for Frost

The start of the weekend produced our first dry day for 14 days. We’ve had some amount of rainfall each day from the 8th to the 23rd of the month.

The problem hasn’t been due to excessive amounts of rain. Lots of the rainfall we’ve had has been as showers. It’s more the fact that the rainfall that has fallen hasn’t had time to dry up. I’m sure some areas will have had larger amounts of rainfall than us.

Sunday, 18 February 2024

To sow or not to sow – Is it too early?

It’s that time of the year when social media posts are full of “should I start sowing some seeds or is it too early?” There’ll be pictures of long leggy seedlings and people asking what to do with them. Of course, the answer is far from simple and depends on where you live in the country. The trick is knowing the dates of the last frosts where you live. Once you have managed to germinate your seeds where will you be able to grow them until the danger of frost is finished?

Sunday, 11 February 2024

I'm back with some weather stuff

I've been busy making gardening videos and have rather neglected writing any blog posts about the weather.

So how did 2023 finish up for us? Well in general 2023 is supposed to have been the hottest, warmest year ever but in our little neck of the woods that wasn't the case. 2023 wasn't even the runner-up, that place went to 2014 with 2022 holding on to the number one spot and 2023 coming third equal with 2011.