The pantomime in London that dominated our news channels last week didn’t depict the only battle that was going on.
We are still battling to keep our crops going on the allotment. We still haven’t had any rain. Martyn, has a weather station in our garden and last week he told me that we hadn’t had a day when the rainfall reached double figures in millimetres since February. Martyn has posted more details about our lack of rain here. We have also posted a video showing the state of our plot here.
We are trying our best to give plants enough water to keep them going but any watering that we manage can’t penetrate far into the ground. The wind and latterly the heat soon dries the soil. Watering is made all the more difficult as when there is more than one person filling a watering can at any one time, the pressure drops and you can only fill it very slowly.
Over the weekend it has been too hot to garden during the day and we have had to pop to the allotment to water in the evening when lots of people have had the same idea.
A disadvantage of a large plot is that we have to prioritise our efforts and unfortunately our potatoes are having to go it alone. We just can’t provide them with the amount of water that they need. As you can see from the photo above the potato tops are giving up the fight.
Our cauliflowers haven’t produced any heads worth cutting, The tiny curds are going brown rather than increasing in size.
Parsnips are very slow to grow in spite of dousing them with lots of water.
If the lack of water wasn’t enough to contend with, our second batch of broad beans have been ruined by a sudden plague of blackfly. We very rarely get blackfly on our beans so this was unexpected. It was amazing how quickly the plants were struck down.
I doubt that the lone harlequin ladybird larva or the tiny adult ladybird will make much impression on the hoards of blackfly.
We are trying our very best to keep our peas and beans going. Our first lot of peas have produced lots of pods which will need sufficient water if they are to swell.
We have also sown more peas and dwarf French beans, These were sown in shallow trenches that had been soaked before sowing the seed. The hope is that this will keep in some moisture when the seeds were covered. The twigs and covering will hopefully deter the birds from using the bed as a dust bath.
We are managing some harvesting.
We picked our first dahlias from plants that are a fraction of the size that they usually are.
The sweet Williams are going over now so these are probably the last that we will cut. Incredibly the sweet Williams have produced a brilliant display with no watering, Maybe the close planting preserved some of the moisture already in the soil.
We only have a few mangetout plants so the pods picked were a treat. Mangetout don’t freeze very well and so really we don’t need to grow large amounts.
We picked just enough broad beans for the evening’s dinner. Maybe we should have picked more before the blackfly took a firm hold.
We picked our first courgettes. The plants are producing lots of fruits but they are surprisingly slow to grow despite being treated to plenty of water.
Netting the jostaberries has paid off. The birds have access to three of the bushes which are now almost devoid of fruit whereas there is plenty of fruit to pick from the two protected bushes.
Our buddleia bushes are now full of flower so we await the arrival of the butterflies. Last year the bushes had a distant lack of browsing butterflies although the bees enjoyed the flowers.
One of last week’s meals was a broad bean and chicken pilaf which made use of some of our broad beans. The recipe also incorporated some of our garlic and over wintered onions. I didn’t shell the broad beans – life’s too short. If the beans are harvested young enough the shells are not tough anyway.
We also had a turkey and vegetable casserole that used our frozen leeks, peas and French beans. It was served with some of our new potatoes.
We managed a visit to Nostell where all the cygnets were developing their preening technique. Their wings are still very small so the flapping wasn’t as impressive as that of their parents. There is a short video of the cygnets here.
It was a sunny afternoon so we kept to the shade of the wooded areas. I think we may have to change to morning visits if the weather stays as warm as it is now.
As always keep safe and well.
Once again I am linking to Dave’s Harvest Monday on his Our Happy Acres blog.
The lack of rain is a real problem just when the veggies really need it. Sorry to see those spuds looking so sad. And the broad beans. We had terrible blackfly and resorted to spraying them as there are so few ladybirds around. We don’t usually bother shelling broad beans until the beans are really too old. We rather like the flavoursome shell.
The shell is good for fibre too Belinda
Same here re lack of rain. Each year it seems to be dryer. My potatoes are yellowing too. What a shame about your broad beans, blackfly destroy our elder trees every year. Love your harvest, especially the soft fruit. Lovely seeing the cygnets growing up.xxx
We always look out for the cygnets, Dina. They seem to be growing quickly this year.
If it isn’t one thing it is another. We got rain in the form of marble sized hail and driving winds. At first it looked like a total loss. Now I have a small bit of hope that a few plants survived. Time will tell. I hope you get a nice gentle downpour soon.
It’s a battlefield, Bonnie. I hope that your plants survive.
In fact, I have just remembered that the newer allotment site has no water onsite at all. I must pop up and see how they are faring. It makes it really hard to get through dry spells for them as you can imagine.
Apparently one of the councillors wanted to turn off water on allotment sites. He said enough water came from the sky! Obviously not a gardener.
The lack of rainfall is worrying isn’t it. We had some quite heavy downfalls last month, but it’s been very dry here lately too and there is no rain at all forecast. The level in my wildlife pond has fallen quite low already. In fact, the waterlily probably needs cutting back as it has rather taken off, despite being a miniature one. At the allotment site I used to be at they had troughs so that you could dip-fill watering cans, which made it all much quicker. Still slow work though.
Did the troughs encourage mosquito larvae CJ and how did they stop baby birds falling in? Did they just rely on rainwater to fill them?
I’m so sorry to hear of the lack of rainfall. We’ve struggled with drought for almost ten years with only a few seasons of normal rainfall. All the effort expended with disheartening results. We can use city water but watering gardens and landscapes gets expensive. The larger issue of climate change is worrisome.
For us this is more like a blip, Sue. I guess the climate has always fluctuated. Ours has always been unpredictable.
There’s really nothing like a good soaking rain. We’ve had more rain than you this year, but not much the last two months. Combine that with above normal temps that hit 100°F several days and even perennials are suffering. I hope this is not the ‘new normal’, because it will make gardening very difficult if so.
I bet next year we’ll be complaining that it’s too wet, Dave, years ago at our garden shows they were telling us that the conditions would be hot and dry and we should grow drought tolerant plants.it was just as well that we didn’t listen 🙂
We’ve had a bad infestation of blackfly on our broad beans too, Sue. And as you said we don’t normally have any problems with them. Trying to keep up with all the watering is hard work.
The conditions must suit them Margaret.
Oh dear, those spuds don’t look too good, I wonder what’s going on beneath the soil. There’s no rain forecast this week either.
We were pleasantly surprised by the spuds, Jo. The bonus was no slug damage or blight