{"id":5988,"date":"2022-07-10T16:22:05","date_gmt":"2022-07-10T15:22:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ossettweather.com\/gardening2022\/?p=5988"},"modified":"2022-07-10T16:22:06","modified_gmt":"2022-07-10T15:22:06","slug":"rain-required-not-a-heatwave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ossettweather.com\/gardening2022\/martyn\/rain-required-not-a-heatwave\/","title":{"rendered":"Rain required not a heatwave"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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It\u2019s a few weeks since I last wrote a blog post, but one thing that hasn\u2019t changed is that we are still waiting for some proper rain. June turned out to be another dry month with below average rainfall. It\u2019s the fourth month in a row that\u2019s been below average. We haven\u2019t had a really wet day since the middle of February. We\u2019ve had showers but not a large enough amount of rain to soak into the soil.<\/p>

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Temperature & Rainfall records January to June 2022<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/blockquote>

For the last four months, we\u2019ve had around half the amount of rainfall we might expect. Over the last 13 years the rainfall each month averages out at around 50mm or 2 in. However, whilst some heavy showers have been around, we\u2019ve missed them all. They\u2019ve been pretty close. Last week we were heading home on the M1 motorway and we were only a few miles from home when we hit a torrential downpour. It was heavy enough to slow down traffic on the motorway. I reckoned it must be just what we needed to ease the dry conditions.<\/span><\/p>

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However, by the time we reached home, it was clear to see that we\u2019d once again missed out.<\/span><\/p>

Looking back through my records it\u2019s the driest start to the year since 2011. So far this year we\u2019ve had 233.0mm (9.2in) of rainfall thanks in the main to a very wet February. In 2011 we\u2019d had even less rainfall than this year with just 195.4mm (7.7in) of rainfall.<\/span><\/p>

It means we\u2019ve been doing lots of watering at the allotment. I consider a good rainfall to be 10mm, a little under half an inch, which should be enough to run off the plant foliage and soak some way into the soil. The last time that occurred was in the middle of February. Even though we\u2019ve had about half our expected rainfall for the last four months, it\u2019s come in very small amounts and certainly hasn\u2019t soaked into the soil. I\u2019ve included a daily breakdown of the rainfall in June to show the typical rainfall pattern of the last four months.<\/span><\/p>

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Rainfall for June 2022<\/figcaption><\/figure>

However, no amount of watering seems to have the same effect as a good downpour. Now that harvesting is getting into full swing we are having to prioritise which crops get watered. Especially now we\u2019re picking raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, gooseberries and jostaberries less time can be spent watering as berry picking is quite time consuming.<\/span><\/p>

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Harvested on 08 July 2022<\/figcaption><\/figure>

We haven\u2019t watered any of the potatoes and these are now suffering from a lack of rain.<\/span><\/p>

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We\u2019ll just have to settle for whatever crop we get. as we certainly haven\u2019t time to spend watering them. We are prioritising beans, peas and brassicas along with courgettes and winter squashes.<\/span><\/p>

The forecast for the next 10 days is for dry, sunny weather with the possibility of temperatures reaching 30\u00b0C (86.0\u00b0F) next weekend. There\u2019s no rain at all in the forecast for the next 10 days so watering will have to continue.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a few weeks since I last wrote a blog post, but one thing that hasn\u2019t changed is that we are still waiting for some proper rain. June turned out to be another dry month with below average rainfall. It\u2019s the fourth month in a row that\u2019s been below average. We haven\u2019t had a really […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_eb_attr":"","ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"0","ocean_second_sidebar":"0","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"0","ocean_custom_header_template":"0","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"0","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"off","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-martyn","entry","has-media"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ossettweather.com\/gardening2022\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/AD5EEFCD-9A91-413F-BA17-6084FF0A772A.jpeg?fit=1000%2C563&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ossettweather.com\/gardening2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ossettweather.com\/gardening2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ossettweather.com\/gardening2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ossettweather.com\/gardening2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ossettweather.com\/gardening2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5988"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ossettweather.com\/gardeni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