So far March has been a disappointing month weather wise. It started off cold before turning cold and snowy. The last week has been on the wet side.

Temperatures for the last week have been all over the place.

Looking at the output from my weather station for the last week you can see what I mean. It’s produced the mildest day of the year with a temperature of 17.7°C  (63.9°F) but we’ve also had three exceptionally cold nights for March. Just a couple of days before that mildest day the overnight temperature fell to -4.1°C (24.6°F) unusually cold for the middle of March. We’ve also had plenty of precipitation in the form of snow and rain.

At the end of February, we were well prepared for the start of the allotmenting year but since the beginning of March, no progress has been made and we are now at least a couple of weeks behind. It can be very difficult to get back on track if we get too far behind at this busy time in the gardening season. However, we’ll have to bide our time as planting into cold, wet soil is not the way to go.

Having visited the plot yesterday some of the ground is in a suitable condition for planting although I’m not too sure the soil will be warm enough. Sue planted some winter onion seedlings to fill in the gaps left by winter losses. It’s time to start thinking about planting some early potatoes but with more rain forecast for this week, planting might have to wait for conditions to improve.

Meanwhile, cabbages, cauliflowers, calabrese, and parsley seedlings growing under the grow light indoors won’t wait much longer before they need to be moved to the greenhouse and transplanted into some larger containers.

It’s time to sow some early broad beans, leeks, onions and sweet peas. These will be sown and left in the greenhouse to germinate as I’m hoping we’ve had the last of cold frosty nights.