Posted: Tuesday 12 June 2012
by Pippa Greenwood
Like so many other gardeners right now I’m despairing, so I think I'll have a good moan and see if it helps.
Like so many other gardeners right now I’m despairing, so I think I'll have a good moan and see if it helps.
In my soft southern garden (as Eric Robson from Gardeners’ Question Time would call it) I’m usually starting to harvest courgettes by this month. This year the poor plants went out late because everything was frosted and frozen.
Having started to wilt when the sun was hot, the courgettes are now slowly drowning, whilst struggling to keep themselves from being plastered down onto the wet soil by the howling gales. I find myself trying to create some form of shelter for tender plants. My tiny courgettes and squash are living under bell cloches, and just about everything else is under some form of fleece, micromesh-covered tunnel or frame.
Now, though, these weather resistant structures are coming loose, so I'm raiding the wardrobes, and seizing any metal coat-hangers I can find, to make extra-long ground pegs to keep the frames in place. After all, if the soil is like un-set jam, and the winds are strong, you can’t really expect a standard-length ground peg to work, can you?
I’m using massive quantities of twine as I have to keep tying things in. My unusually slow runners and climbing French beans need to be re-tied into their wigwam, the peas keep veering downwards, and the sweet peas too have lost their usually tiger-like grip.
To cap it all, our lovely rescue hens, are almost completely un-waterproof. What were they fed on?
So, as once again, I come in covered in mud and drenched, is there any good news? Yes: first, the peach leaf curl-infected leaves have all been blown off the tree (so there’s no need for me to pick them off).
Second, it keeps raining so much that I don’t have to worry about keeping the soil moist, to ensure that my recently applied nematodes can move about and attack the slugs ... they must be holding a swimming gala down there!
Graham Morgan
15/06/2012 at 09:22
Don't get me started on the weather, me taters are rotting under 2" of water, onions just started to grow and stair rod rain just bounced em out of the ground, me strimmer packed in so while it went for repair the weeds just ran amok and the grass on't lotment is the home for all kinds of fierce creatures, shed has sprung a leak and I can't even sit on the chsair it is soaking wet, Still look on the bright side just when everthing is growing nicely it will be winter and the ruddy frosts will kill everything off, and don't get me started on mud and clay. I blame the Weather men on telly they are all warlocks and witches predicting rain/floods/drought, gail force winds etc etc etc, get rid of the lot and return to looking out of the window to see if the crows are flying backwards, AHHH good old fasioned weather, I am old enough to remember when we had seasons.
Mr Grumpy
York
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