Rainfall or Dare I Say Lack of It!

Not a bad day again on Sunday. A reasonable amount of sunshine and around average temperatures and certainly not as chilly over night.

As I sowed our carrots and parsnips I did notice that the first few inches of soil are now quite dry. Our potatoes planted a little deeper where there is moisture will be fine but if it doesn't rain then the carrot and parsnip seeds sown on Saturday will certainly need watering to help them germinate.

As you can see the last month has been dry. Even the tallest blue lines don’t amount to much rain with values of around 5 mm. That amount soon disappears in the gale force winds. So after seeming to wait for weeks for the plot to dry out some watering might be required in April.

Of course this wasn't a problem last year in April as we had far too much rainfall with record amounts falling in various locations around the UK.

At the moment the rather dry month of this April is replacing the record breaking month last year, and it makes a real difference to the rolling 12 monthly rainfall, falling from the highest I've recorded of 142% back to 125% provided we have no more rainfall this month.

I wonder how long it will be before some authority suggests a hose pipe ban in their area.

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