Generally, the weather has been pretty good for most of May. However, for gardeners, there have been one or two issues that have made the month a bit of a gardening challenge. Firstly there was a very late frost, the latest I’ve recorded in May. It was well forecast allowing us to give some plants protection but others had their new leaves nipped by the frost. A frosty night does nothing to help young seedlings get established.
Grape vine caught by frost
Following up on the frosty night we’ve just had three days of gale force winds. Fortunately after visiting the plot today (Bank Holiday Monday) we’ve discovered that not too much damage was done. On our last trip we had repositioned our cold frame ready for planting up with tomato plants this year.
Above shows how we left the cold frame thinking it might give our newly planted out dahlias some protection from the strong winds that were forecast. However, when we returned on Monday the gales had kindly repositioned our cold frame.
Our dahlias were carefully wrapped up in environmesh with our cold frame upside down on the path. It didn’t take long to reposition the cold frame and luckily there was no damage to our dahlias.
However, our main problem at the minute is a lack of rainfall. We haven’t had anything approaching a good rain since the middle of March.
Temperature & Rainfall Records 2020
Now it’s important to note that in March nearly all that rainfall fell in the first two weeks of the month. This meant that by the middle of March we’d had 229.4mm or 9.03 in of rainfall. After a very wet February when it never seemed to stop raining the allotment was well and truly waterlogged with standing water on some parts of the allotment site.
Then in the middle of March someone turned off the tap and the incessant rain of winter stopped in an instant. It’s hardly rained since. From the middle of March onwards, we’ve had a mere 14.8mm or 0.58 in of rainfall and most of that has come in very small amounts made up of very light showers. The result is that the allotment has gone from waterlogged to bone dry ground in the space of about 10 weeks.
I did manage to dig over these three beds with the cultivator on Monday but it was very hard going. At first, I thought the ground was too hard and dry and the cultivator just wanted to bounce along the top of the hard ground. After a bit of persistence I managed to get the tines to dig into the soil and eventually managed to dig over the beds. Normally I’d expect freshly cultivated soil to be dark and moist but this was completely lacking in any moisture.
There’s nothing more than fractions of a millimetre forecast over the next ten days. Hence, the reason I thought I might as well try and dig over some of the beds. I had been hanging on waiting for some rain to soften up the soil but it appears that’s unlikely to happen over the next week or so. We are still going to be very busy watering.
