At last, we made it to 20°C or 68.0°F. Sunday afternoon turned out to be sunny and warm with the temperature reaching 23.4°C (74.1°F) late in the afternoon.

However, as you can see from the weather details above it was strictly a one day phenomenon and Bank Holiday Monday has turned out to be cool and wet.

I spent most of Sunday afternoon at the allotment strimming the grass paths. Well, it seemed that way. I think grass paths set the beds off really well but the downside is when the weather is cool and wet the grass grows at an alarming rate. At this time of year, there are plenty of other more important jobs to get done and the grass gets left until it gets very long. The longer it gets the harder and longer it takes to strim and get back into some sort of shape. Anyhow, for a few days, the grass paths will look neat and tidy.

The next important job is to get both garden and plot greenhouses ready for their summer crops of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers.

Our home greenhouse is full of crops either in the process of germinating or growing on before they move into the cold frame and then the allotment. Our runner beans, and climbing French beans are under the fleece just to protect them from any mice that might take a fancy to them. Most of our new dahlias are in pots and just beginning to shoot. They will all soon have to move outside to make way for this year’s tomato crop.

Once they are all moved out I’ll lift some of the paving slabs so that the tomatoes and cucumber can be planted directly in the soil beneath. I’ll be adding some compost and growmore fertiliser into the soil before planting. Growing them in the ground makes watering so much easier.

All this will really need doing this week or the tomato plants will become leggy as they fight for space in their small cells of compost. In any case they will be planted deeply in the ground to overcome any legginess that has developed. 

The plot greenhouse will take a bit more sorting out as it tends to be used for the storage of weed control fabric, environmesh and netting over winter. We’ll only be growing tomatoes in the plot greenhouse. They will be grown in pots sunk into the ground which stops them drying out too quickly in summer.

Hopefully, the rest of the week will be an improvement on Bank Holiday Monday.