Not a Brilliant Start to March

It’s certainly not been a brilliant start to the month. On the upside, we haven’t had any rain which has meant that the allotment has begun to dry out. However, it has been cold and dull generally with very little sunshine and temperatures below average. Unfortunately, the forecast is for the weather to worsen over the next week with wet and windy weather returning bringing with it the possibility of wintry showers. I was hoping we’d seen the last of any snow.

 

I’m not planning on sowing any main crop seeds until the conditions warm up. The allotment was getting towards being in a suitable state for sowing and planting but it won’t take an awful lot of rain to tip the balance between suitable and unsuitable.

I’ve sown a few experimental lettuce and salad leaves which have been placed in our growlight to germinate. 

If we’re lucky the salad leaves will produce some salad leaves for sandwiches. I’m planning on leaving them under the lights to grow on to maturity but the lettuces will have to move into the greenhouse to grow on. They probably won’t survive any very cold weather even in the greenhouse. There are several hundred lettuce seeds in the packet so I’ve nothing to lose if this very early crop fails.

Over the next week, I’d like to get a couple of tubs of early potatoes Casablanca planted up and another couple of tubs with carrots. Hopefully, temperatures in the greenhouse will be good enough for the carrots to germinate.

 

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