Monday 29 April 2024
Concern shifts from wet to cold
Tuesday 23 April 2024
Flexible planting plans
Monday 15 April 2024
Has it been that wet?
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.