Throughout April our concern has been the lack of anything resembling a dry spell of weather. However, the latter half of the month has been drier and the ground has been steadily improving to a state where it is fit to cultivate. The trade-off for the drier weather has been for colder weather, with daytime temperatures below average for the second half of April.
The red line on the chart above shows the average high temperatures for April since 2010 and you will notice this month’s values fall below that line from the middle of the month. The 26th of the month produced the lowest temperature of the month as overnight it fell to -0.9°C or 30.4°F.
The low overnight temperatures have been forecast and our dahlia plants and tomato plants have been covered with fleece to give them a little bit of extra protection.
Although our tomato plants haven’t exactly started to grow away very quickly they don’t appear to have been frosted so I’m hoping they get going once the cold nights are finished.
I’m a little bit more concerned about the poor germination of our leeks. I probably chose a bad time to sow them just before the cold spell of weather started. Anyhow, whatever the cause the germination rate has been very poor so I decided to resow. Rather than sow them the more traditional way, a second batch has been set to germinate on damp kitchen roll alongside our parsnip seeds. Sowing parsnips like this produced a bumper crop for us last year so we are going for a repeat this year.
The good news is that, if the forecasts are correct, temperatures are due to pick up next week and the wet weather disappear for a week at least,
